Partners Timothy W. Mungovan (co-head of Private Equity & Hedge Fund Litigation Group) and Christopher M. Wells (head of Hedge Funds Group)  have been invited to join a large collection of senior regulators at the Regulatory Compliance Association’s Enforcement, Compliance & Operations (ECO) 2016 Symposium.  The conference will take place on Tuesday May 17 at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City.

Tim will be chairing the session entitled: “Enforcement 2016 – New Priorities, Initiatives and Latest Developments.”

Chris will be chairing the panel entitled: “SEC Exam and NFA Audit Practice: 2016 Areas of Focus with Case Studies.”

SECOn January 11, 2016, the staff of the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released its annual announcement on examination priorities in the coming calendar year. While the announcement contains broad and general descriptions of areas in which the staff intends to focus, there are several key points to which advisers to hedge funds, private equity funds and other private funds should pay close attention:

SECOn June 25, 2015, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) set a compliance date of July 31, 2015 for the ban on payments to third parties for the solicitation of advisory business from any government entity under Rule 206(4)-5 of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 (Pay-to-Play Rule). At the

SECAndrew J. Bowden, the Director of the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, gave a speech entitled “Spreading Sunshine in Private Equity” in May 2014. While sounding cheery, the “spreading sunshine” metaphor was an ironic evocation of Justice Brandeis’s famous statement that “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants” in response to social and industrial diseases.