On June 23, the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) published a Risk Alert discussing three general areas of deficiencies identified by OCIE staff in recent examinations of hedge fund and private equity managers: (1) conflicts of interest, (2) fees and expenses and (3) policies and procedures relating to material non-public information. This note will focus on certain observations from OCIE with respect to conflicts of interest and the related lessons in terms of investor disclosure, which are rooted in the concept of “informed consent,” as discussed in the SEC’s June 2019 Commission Interpretation Regarding Standard of Conduct for Investment Advisers (the 2019 Release).
While the Risk Alert describes deficiencies observed in examinations of registered investment advisers, the fiduciary duty and anti-fraud provisions cited by OCIE[1] apply equally to “exempt reporting advisers.” As such, below are selected topics from the Risk Alert for private fund advisers to consider in reviewing conflicts of interest-related disclosure provided to investors.
Allocation of Investments. OCIE staff raised concerns about private fund advisers’ inadequate disclosure with respect to allocation of investment opportunities among various clients, including flagship funds, co-investment vehicles, separately managed accounts (SMAs), and employee or partner vehicles. The SEC has previously noted, in the 2019 Release, that an adviser “need not have pro rata allocation policies, or any particular method of allocation…” Further, “[a]n adviser and a client may even agree [emphasis added] that certain investment opportunities or categories of investment opportunities will not be allocated or offered to a client.” In the Risk Alert, however, OCIE staff described instances of allocations in inequitable amounts among clients “without providing adequate disclosure about the allocation process…thereby causing certain investors…not to receive their equitable allocations of such investments.”
Preferential Liquidity Terms. The Risk Alert described conflicts related to preferential liquidity rights granted to certain investors in side letters, as well as conflicts related to advisers that had set up SMAs that invest alongside flagship funds without providing sufficient disclosure to fund investors of the SMAs’ preferential liquidity terms. In OCIE’s view, such advisers’ “[f]ailure to disclose these special terms adequately meant that some investors were unaware of the potential harm that could be caused by selected investors redeeming their investments ahead of other investors, particularly in times of market dislocation where there is a greater likelihood of a financial impact.”
Seed and other Strategic Investors. In addition, OCIE highlighted seed investor arrangements and other economic relationships between advisers and certain fund investors as another area of insufficient transparency, noting that “[f]ailure to provide adequate disclosure about these arrangements meant that other investors did not have important information related to conflicts associated with their investments.”
Co-Investment Opportunities. With respect to co-investments, OCIE cited observations of private fund advisers with inadequate disclosure regarding agreements to provide preferential access to such opportunities to a subset of investors. As such, those investors may not have understood “the scale of co-investments and in what manner co-investment opportunities would be allocated among investors.” There were also failures to follow disclosed policies in allocating investments, including between flagship funds and dedicated co-investment vehicles.
[1] The Risk Alert cites an investment adviser’s fiduciary duty under Section 206 of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, as amended (Advisers Act), as well as advisers’ obligations under Advisers Act Rule 206(4)-8, which is an anti-fraud provision aimed specifically at protecting pooled investment vehicles and their investors.