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Michael R. Hackett

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Mike Hackett is a partner in the Litigation Department and Co-Head of the Asset Management Litigation practice. An experienced litigator and trial lawyer, Mike’s practice focuses on complex commercial litigation, with a particular emphasis on asset management, financial services, M&A, shareholder, and life sciences disputes.

A significant portion of Mike’s practice concerns disputes and regulation involving private funds, including private equity, venture capital, hedge, real estate and private credit funds, as well as their sponsors, partners, investors, portfolio companies, and officers and directors. Mike’s experience representing private fund clients runs the gamut, from control contests within advisers, to disputes between limited partners and general partners, to representation of investment advisers in connection with regulatory examinations, investigations and enforcement matters. Mike routinely represents funds, fund sponsors, portfolio companies, and their officers and directors, including in significant post-closing M&A disputes.

Mike also litigates high-stakes commercial disputes in the life sciences and financial services areas, including for established pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, emerging and innovative start-ups, asset managers, and other private capital investors, in areas such as M&A, breach of contract, indemnification, fraud, contested earnouts and royalties, securities and capital markets, and corporate governance.

Mike has been recognized by Chambers USA and was named a “Rising Star” by Massachusetts Super Lawyers.

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With ESG regulation now well embedded across all major jurisdictions, the trend we see for 2025 is about increasingly sophisticated triangulation by private fund managers between the regimes that apply by default (such as mandatory corporate sustainability reporting), those that apply by choice (such as becoming an Article 8 fund within the meaning of the EU’s SFDR or the new for 2024 ESMA ESG Fund Name Guidelines – see summary here) and those that apply by third party request or expectation (such as reporting obligations within side letters). As regimes evolve, the ESG-approach of any fund once identified, chosen and defined must also take into account tracking developments and monitoring compliance.

Confession: writing this in May 2025, we cannot predict with confidence what the rest of 2025 will bring. The year has already seen four months of change and upheaval – political, regulatory, and economic. The new US administration has touted a business-friendly regulatory environment, with actual and promised tax cuts and deregulation. However, geopolitical tensions, tariff trade wars and political instability have introduced new risks and created a climate of extreme unpredictability. We should expect 2025 to hold several surprises still, whether that is a breakout of peace or new political themes obtaining prominence in one or more jurisdictions.

In response to rising geopolitical tensions – from the Middle East to the Taiwan Strait to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine –the Biden Administration is increasingly using economic incentives and sanctions to assist the United States’ foreign policy objectives or mitigate the risk of increased conflict.

Hope for a resurgence during 2024 in Venture Capital fundraising, investment, and returns was strong at the beginning of this year, with optimism fueled by the recovery in 2023 of U.S. stock markets (lead by the performance of large tech companies) and anticipation about how AI might transform industries. Market observers were optimistic then that U.S. venture investment activity would pick up significantly from 2023 levels, which—based on PitchBook data—had reverted to the lower average level of investment seen during the period of 2018-2020 as compared to the robust levels of activity seen in 2021 and the first half of 2022. This hope was centered in large part on expectations about how the Federal Reserve would begin lowering interest rates. 

Big fund-raising rounds and high valuations have some wondering whether the AI sector is in a bubble in the nature of the dotcom boom. As of this writing, OpenAI is valued at over $80 billion; Amazon added another $2.75 billion to its investment in Anthropic; and even some very early-stage startups, like France-based Mistral AI, have racked up hundreds of millions in venture-capital funding at valuations over a billion dollars. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichar has said AI could be more profound than the invention of electricity or the discovery of fire. Is the hype real?

The SEC’s new and proposed rules on cybersecurity and cyber-incident reporting will have a dual impact on private investment advisers and funds. 

First, the proposal by the SEC will impose cybersecurity related obligations on investment advisers, registered investment companies and business development companies, with a final rule in this sector (the “adviser cybersecurity rule”) expected in April 2024. 

In its final Private Fund Adviser Rules adopted last year, the SEC dropped one of the more controversial proposed rules—the proposal to prohibit contractual exculpation or indemnification provisions that would shield or indemnify the adviser in matters involving the adviser’s negligence or breach of fiduciary duty.  On its face, this was a concession to the fund management industry. However, the Rule’s Adopting Release asserted that the SEC believed the provision was not needed because the antifraud provisions of the Advisers Act already prohibited certain provisions that would be covered by the proposal. Because the SEC’s interpretation was based on current law (there is no grandfathering or “implementation date” in the future), we predict that contractual indemnification or exculpation provisions will remain firmly in the SEC’s sights for 2024. SEC exams and enforcement proceedings are likely to focus on these provisions, and they may be implicated in GP/LP disputes as well.

Adviser-led secondary transactions have seen explosive growth over the last five years.  That growth has brought increased regulatory concerns over the conflicts of interests inherent in these transactions and a perceived lack of transparency into this market.  New SEC rules adopted in 2023 will arm regulators with additional tools to identify, exam and investigate market practices.  It is therefore critical for managers running an adviser-led secondary transaction to not only comply with the new rules as they become effective but to structure any such transaction with the SEC’s concerns in mind. 

2023’s excitement for generative artificial intelligence (AI) prompted the SEC to respond on multiple fronts – stump speeches, rulemaking, new exam priorities and sweeps and previewing potential enforcement actions. SEC Chair Gary Gensler raised concerns regarding potential conflicts and investor harm resulting from the proliferation of AI and warned that an AI-caused financial crisis is nearly unavoidable absent regulation. The SEC adopted a number of initiatives in 2023 to respond to these perceived risks. 

ESG continues to be a hot topic for 2024 for investors and regulators alike. The specific concerns investors and regulators have – and what they expect to develop over the coming months – differ, however, across jurisdictions, including because of the different maturity of existing regulation between the EU/UK and the US.