Investment Funds
Crowell & Moring has a vibrant and growing investment funds practice. Our clients include domestic and offshore private investment funds (including hedge funds, private equity and venture capital funds and their partners), investment advisers, funds of funds, and broker-dealers. We serve as regular outside general counsel to various clients, and as counsel for fund, regulatory, compliance, M&A, enforcement, litigation, and other matters.
We assist clients throughout every stage of the investment cycle, and our attorneys have comprehensive experience in every aspect of global private equity investment, including M&A, leveraged buyouts, private investments in public companies, cross-border transactions, consortia arrangements, joint ventures, carve-out transactions, financing and venture capital.
As a large international law firm with approximately 500 lawyers practicing in many of the world's major financial centers, our lawyers are able to draw upon the experience and resources of attorneys in our other areas of practice, including regulatory, tax, litigation, corporate and financial services to assist in solving complex, and often international, issues surrounding investment fund work.
Selecting outside counsel to assist in the formation of a private investment partnership is one of the most difficult choices for clients and others. In many cases, forming a hedge fund or private equity fund becomes the first project for our clients that will subsequently lead to transactional work (through the purchase and ultimate sale of portfolio companies), regulatory work, portfolio company matters, and other client-specific and –unique matters. Crowell's corporate lawyers are not siloed within an investment funds practice; we are ambidextrous and experienced across the entire spectrum of corporate, securities and investment issues that our clients encounter. We draw upon the resources of specialties such as our tax and ERISA group, and we bring in other firm lawyers as warranted for, by way of example, litigation, or securities enforcement, or expertise required by porfolio companies in their underlying businesses. We have a network of lawyers both within and outside the firm who we routinely engage for clients with international questions.
We are practical and experienced. Several of our senior lawyers have spent many years working inside investment firms, and know the need for prompt, efficient service and understand the internal dynamics and operations of firms.
Finally, Crowell's leadership in alternative fee arrangements extends to the investment funds practice. We serve as regular outside general counsel to many investment firms, and the depth and breadth of our practice permits us to work on fixed-fee, retainer, and almost any other sensible business arrangement that ties together our legal expertise and our clients’ business needs. Our senior lawyers in the group in Washington, New York, Orange County and San Francisco are able to discuss these issues directly with our clients.