SEC Considers Whether to Adopt Registration Requirement

Yesterday the SEC announced that they will conduct an Open Meeting on June 22 to determine whether to adopt the new hedge fund registration requirements and related rules. At the Open Meeting the SEC is expected to delay implementation of the regulations until next year.   While the SEC announced in a letter to NASAA that they would likely extend the registration deadline, there has been no official action on this issue.  This has left managers (and lawyers and compliance personnel) unsure of how to proceed.  We will know more after the June 22 meeting.

The notice of the Open Meeting, reprinted below in full, can be found here.  Hat tip to Doug Cornelius at Compliance Building for publishing this story earlier today.

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Notice is hereby given, pursuant to the provisions of the Government in the Sunshine Act, Pub. L. 94-409, that the Securities and Exchange Commission will hold an Open Meeting on June 22, 2011 at 10:00 a.m., in the Auditorium, Room L-002.

The subject matters of the Open Meeting will be:

Item 1: The Commission will consider whether to adopt new rules and rule amendments under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 to implement provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. These rules and rule amendments are designed to gi

ve effect to provisions of Title IV of the Dodd-Frank Act that, among other things, increase the statutory threshold for registration of investment advisers with the Commission, require advisers to hedge funds and other private funds to register with the Commission, and address reporting by certain investment advisers that are exempt from registration.

Item 2: The Commission will consider whether to adopt rules that would implement new exemptions from the registration requirements of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 for advisers to venture capital funds and advisers with less than $150 million in private fund assets under management in the United States. These exemptions were enacted as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The new rules also would clarify the meaning of certain terms included in a new exemption for foreign private advisers.

Item 3: The Commission will consider whether to adopt a rule defining “family offices” that will be excluded from the definition of an

investment adviser under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.

At times, changes in Commission priorities require alterations in the scheduling of meeting items.

For further information and to ascertain what, if any, matters have been added, deleted or postponed, please contact:

The Office of the Secretary at (202) 551-5400.

Elizabeth M. Murphy

Secretary

June 8, 2011

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Bart Mallon is an attorney with a practice focused on hedge funds and investment adviser registration.  He can be reached directly at 415-868-5345.