Doug Cornelius on compliance for private equity real estate
Handsome rich man from New England forced to take four-week vacation with supermodel wife. As a football fan, New England Patriots fan and a compliance professional, I can’t let the Wells Report and the punishment levied by the NFL pass without comment. There was a violation of the league rules and there should be punishment. … Read more »
Private Equity Real Estate has released its ranking of the top 50 real estate private equity fund managers. As I have done in the past, I parsed the list to see which managers are registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as investment advisers. (Disclosure: my company is on the list.) — Name of institution … Read more »
This is not a question that you can answer without any background. Theoretically, a fund can directly pay a fund’s office expenses. It’s just that most investors do not expect to pay for a manager’s office expenses. Investors expect the management fee they pay to cover those expenses, with the rest as profit for the … Read more »
JPMorgan Chase & Co. has racked up more than $36 billion in legal bills since the financial crisis. The firm clearly has incentive to identify rogue employees before they go astray. According a story in Bloomberg, the firm is rolling out a new surveillance tool to identify potential rogue employees. I’m skeptical. I attended a … Read more »
There is no explicit requirement that an adviser or fund manager have a disaster recovery plan. But any manager trying to fund-raise knows that investors will ask about its business continuity plan. The SEC sort of requires SEC registered investment advisers to have a business continuity plan. It’s an easy one to miss in Rule … Read more »
In The Producers, Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom realize they can make more money with a flop than a hit. No one audits a flop and the fraudsters are free to flee with their investors’ money. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, GC Resources, LLC and Brian J. Polito was trying to run a … Read more »
Once you hear the words “inter-fund loans”, a compliance professional is going to sit up straight and be concerned. Anything “inter-fund” is an inherent conflict. That one fund is loaning another fund money is an indicator that something has gone wrong. Stilwell Value managed several private funds. According to the SEC order, the Stilwell funds … Read more »
This: Click for the full PDF file SEC Commissioner Daniel M. Gallagher drew this picture of the new rules applicable to U.S. financial services holding companies since Dodd-Frank. “The stakes here are considerable: regulatory burdens divert capital away from the real economy—this acts as a barrier to entry for new market participants and further entrenches … Read more »
The Securities and Exchange Commission brought another enforcement case involving an investment adviser and private funds. PageOne is a registered investment adviser that recommended three private investment funds to its clients. The SEC found serious conflicts the were not disclosed or materially misrepresented. PageOne disclosed that is was paid a “referral fee” by the private … Read more »
Any story about the SEC, funds, gifts will catch my attention. Last week, the Staff of the SEC’s Division of Investment Management issued IM Guidance Update No. 2015-1 on gifts and entertainment in the fund industry. The Guidance refers to section Section 17(e)(1), which did not seem familiar to me. The reference is to the … Read more »