Willkie’s Registered Funds team provides a complete suite of legal services to, among other clients, registered open-end mutual funds, exchange traded funds (ETFs), closed-end funds (including listed funds and continuously offered interval or tender offer funds), business development companies (including traded and non-traded BDCs), and their advisers, sub-advisers, distributors, and other service providers, as well as independent fund directors. Our practice is diverse, integrated and at the forefront of industry innovation. We offer comprehensive advice regarding new fund and adviser formations and registrations, product structuring, leveraging arrangements, capital markets transactions (including initial public offerings, at-the-market offerings and rights offerings for closed-end funds), distribution activities and intermediary platforms, portfolio trading issues, SEC exams, SEC rule implementation, novel exemptive and no-action relief, contract negotiations with service providers, and navigating evolving product and regulatory trends. We also have a thriving transactional practice that regularly counsels clients regarding adviser M&A, fund mergers and consolidations, fund adoptions, and product harmonization. In addition, the multifaceted nature of our Asset Management team allows us to provide advice to clients seeking to bridge the gap to offer private and institutional strategies to a retail asset base.
Our experience with a broad array of regulated fund products, along with our long history of structuring creative solutions to address complex regulatory requirements, have made us trusted advisors to some of the largest fund managers in the world, as well as a valuable resource for smaller asset managers seeking experienced and practical guidance. We regularly leverage, and share with clients, our collective insights, analyses and market intelligence as to current issues and industry and market trends.
Chambers USA 2023 ranks Willkie as a leader in registered funds, commending our team’s representation of “leading registered funds, as well as their advisers and independent directors, in connection with the full range of ’40 Act matters” and coverage of “the whole spectrum from organization and registration to offerings.” Chambers US 2023 also ranks Willkie as a leader in Investment Funds: Regulatory and Compliance, noting that Willkie is known as the go-to firm for complex, innovative regulatory matters within the registered funds space. Willkie has been named as a finalist for the “Best Law Firm Award” by the 2023 and 2024 Fund Intelligence Operations & Services Awards and has been recognized as the “Law Firm of the Year” in Mutual Funds Law in the 2023 edition of U.S. News – Best Lawyers® “Best Law Firms” report.
