Tag Archives: 100 women in hedge funds

Hedge Fund Regulatory Changes Panel Event

100 Women in Hedge Funds September 2011 Event

There are a number of events throughout the country this month for hedge fund managers.  In addition to the end of summer, the industry is preparing for a number of significant changes which will begin affecting managers this year and next year.  As we've discussed previously, we think that some of the major issues for managers going forward will be:

While we will be exploring these topics in greater depth over the coming months, the 100 Women in Hedge Funds San Francisco event will be a great opportunity to hear industry leaders discuss how these issues are likely to affect managers.   For more information, please see the notice below.

If you are interested in registering for the event, you can sign up here.

****

Strategically Anticipating & Managing the Impact of Regulatory Reform

September 20, 2011 at 6 PM

San Francisco CA

With the expansion of the SEC’s jurisdiction and mission through regulatory reform, a hedge fund adviser’s efficiency in anticipating and managing the impact of the onslaught of new regulation is critical to its investment and business success. Please join senior hedge fund legal and compliance practitioners for an interactive discussion that will highlight how advisers can better tailor their regulatory risk mitigation practice to specific areas of recent SEC focus.

The discussion will include:

  • An assessment of the SEC’s new focus on investment advisers in examinations and enforcement, including best practice for managing compliance with disclosed investment strategies and risks, redemption and liquidity terms, trading practices, and enforcement actions against CCOs.
  • The cumulative effect of new disclosure requirements: Form ADV, Form PF, FATCA
  • How firms should manage issues created by the regulation of political contributions, including the SEC’s pay-to-play rule and California’s lobbying rules for placement agents

Participants

Helane Morrison, Moderator, Hall Capital Partners LLC

Mark Perlow, K & L Gates LLP

Danell Doty, Passport Capital LLC

Event Details

Date: September 20, 2011

Time: 5 PM Registration.

We will begin promptly at 6 PM; please arrive early. Since it is disruptive to everyone when latecomers enter the session, those arriving after an education session has begun will only be admitted at the discretion of 100WHF and the host. Please note the start time on this invite and plan to arrive early.

Networking and cocktails prior to session.

Host: K & L Gates LLP

Location: K&L Gates LLP

Four Embarcadero Center, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94111 – Directions

RSVP: http://www.100womeninhedgefunds.org/pages/event_registration.php

This event is NOT FOR ATTRIBUTION.

Admission is free, but there is a $25 charge if you register and do not attend, even if you cancel in advance. No-show proceeds will be donated to the Clinton Global Initiative's US Childhood Obesity Prevention Program, the 2011 beneficiary of 100WHF's US philanthropic initiatives.

If you have no-show fees in arrears, the system cannot register you for an event. You can view and pay for any outstanding no-show fees online from your member profile at: http://www.100womeninhedgefunds.org/pages/my_profile.php

Space is limited. No walk-ins will be permitted.

Biographies

Helane Morrison, General Counsel & CCO, Hall Capital Partners LLC

Helane L. Morrison is a Managing Director, General Counsel, and Chief Compliance Officer of Hall Capital Partners LLC. She is also a member of the firm's Executive Committee.

Prior to joining the firm in 2007, Ms. Morrison headed the San Francisco Office of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) from 1999 to 2007. In her capacity as Regional Director and earlier as District Administrator, Ms. Morrison was responsible for securities enforcement, litigation, and regulatory matters in Northern California and five Northwest States. From 1996 to 1999, Ms. Morrison was head of enforcement for the San Francisco SEC office. She represented the SEC in legal, business, and financial communities, as well as with other government agencies and news media.

Previously, Ms. Morrison practiced law at the San Francisco law firm Howard, Rice , Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin from 1986 to 1996 where she was elevated to partner in 1991. Her practice focused on business litigation and defense of private securities actions and SEC matters. She also conducted internal corporate investigations. Before entering private practice, Ms. Morrison served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun (1985-1986) and Hon. Richard A. Posner of tile U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (1984-1985).

Ms. Morrison has served as a Director of the Bar Association of San Francisco (“BASF”) and a member of the BASF Judiciary Committee. Ms. Morrison served as a Lawyer Representative (Northern District of California) to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, and was Co-Chair. She was a member of the Northern District of California, Civil Justice Reform Act Advisory group. She served on the Board of Directors of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law Alumni Association and was Secretary of the Board. She was a member of the Federal Courts Committee of the California Bar Association and served on the Contra Costa County Human Relations Commission.

Ms. Morrison received a B.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University and earned a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, School of Law, where she was Editor-In-Chief of the California Law Review.

Mark Perlow, Partner, K & L Gates LLP

Mr. Perlow is a partner in the San Francisco office of K&L Gates LLP. His practice focuses on investment management and securities law, and he regularly represents hedge fund managers, mutual funds, investment advisers, fund boards of directors, and broker-dealers on a broad range of regulatory and transactional matters. Before K&L Gates, Mr. Perlow served as senior counsel in the Office of the General Counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission, focusing on investment management, fund and corporate governance, and enforcement, and he also served in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. Mr. Perlow is a frequent speaker and author on topics relating to investment management and the law, and he teaches a class at the UC Berkeley School of Law on the structure and regulation of capital markets and financial institutions.

Danell Doty, Senior Compliance Officer, Passport Capital LLC

Ms. Doty is a Senior Compliance Officer at Passport Capital, LLC, a global investment firm managing approximately $4.7 billion in assets. Her responsibilities include a broad range of activities including maintaining the firm’s compliance program. Before joining Passport, Ms. Doty served as Director of Fund Administration at Genworth Financial Wealth Management and Treasurer to its mutual fund companies. Ms. Doty was hired at Barclays Global Investors in 1999, where, as Head of Mutual Fund Administration, she was involved in the creation of the iShares products. She then served as Fund Chief Compliance Officer from 2004 to 2006. Prior to BGI, Ms. Doty served in several capacities for London Pacific Group, including Vice President of Operations. She was also instrumental in creating the Govett Funds and the Berkeley Funds.

About 100 Women in Hedge Funds (www.100womeninhedgefunds.org)

100 Women in Hedge Funds is a global, practitioner-driven non-profit organization serving over 10,000 alternative investment management investors and professionals through educational, professional leverage and philanthropic initiatives. Formed in 2001, 100 Women in Hedge Funds has hosted more than 250 events globally, connected more than 250 senior women through Peer Advisory Groups and raised globally over $21.5 million gross for philanthropic causes in the areas of women's and family health, education and mentoring. For more information about 100 Women in Hedge Funds, please visit www.100womeninhedgefunds.org.

****

Cole-Frieman & Mallon LLP runs the Hedge Fund Law Blog.  About Cole-Frieman & Mallon LLP:

Informed by significant in-house and private practice experience at some of the most prestigious Wall Street firms, hedge funds, and law firms Cole-Frieman & Mallon LLP has the business acumen and market knowledge to provide legal solutions for a wide range of financial services matters. With offices in San Francisco and New York, Cole-Frieman & Mallon LLP has a nationwide practice that services both start-up managers as well as multi-billion dollar firms. Cole-Frieman & Mallon LLP provides a variety of services including: hedge fund formation, advisor registration and counterparty documentation, CFTC and NFA matters, seed deals, internal investigations, operational compliance, regulatory risk management, hedge fund due diligence, marketing and investor relations, employment and compensation matters, and routine business matters. For more information please visit us at: http://www.colefrieman.com/.

Karl Cole-Frieman can be reached at 415-352-2300.

Bart Mallon can be reached directly at 415-868-5345.

zp8497586rq

FLOORED Film Peeks Inside Chicago Trading World

Leave a reply

Audience Reacts Positively to James Allen Smith’s Documentary on Chicago Floor Trading

On Thursday evening at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco, the professional women’s organization 100 Women in Hedge Funds sponsored the showing of Floored, a documentary by ex-floor trader James Allen Smith that offers a peek inside the lives, successes, and struggles of former traders of the Chicago trading floor (a.k.a. the “pit”).

Those who showed up to watch the film made for the perfect audience–traders, hedge fund managers, and other financial industry professionals schmoozed over wine and cheese before the showing, during which boos, laughter, applause, and verbal comments erupted each time the audience could relate to traders’ stories or make fun of their often idiosyncratic comments. Upon leaving trading, one notable former trader (and quite the character) Mike Walsh took up the hobby of hunting lions, giraffes, and other wild animals.

Through interviews and live footage of pit trading, the documentary tells the story of the Chicago Board of Trade’s (now the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CME) humble beginnings–it opened in 1898 as the Chicago Butter and Egg Board because it only traded butter and egg contracts!–to the roller coaster ride experienced by floor traders during the peak of futures and options floor trading in the mid-1990s.

Starting in 1992 and still in use today in the pit is the combination of open outcry, the system of loudly shouting over competitors often associated with floor trading, and GLOBEX, an electronic trading system which works alongside open outcry to make trading more efficient. The idea behind trading revolves around buying a commodity at one price and then trying to sell it for a better price in order to make a profit.  In the film, the traders described this system as a game–one trader stated that when the bell goes off (to initiate the opening of trading hours), he experiences an adrenaline rush as if he were playing a sports game.  Another trader commented, “Trading is not a normal job. When you are in there [the pit] from 8:30 to 3:15, it’s all about money!”

The main issue traders discussed was the shift from floor trading to electronic trading. The majority opinion was that computers changed the dynamic of trading in an unfavorable way and that trading in person helps make the price of commodities more efficient. One trader commented that open outcry was more “honorable”. There is also a generational issue, as older traders who did not grow up using computers had trouble figuring out complicated electronic trading platforms. Essentially, those traders who still had enough money to continue trading and who were able to use the electronic systems continued trading, while those who lost too much money in the pit were forced to leave trading altogether.

According to the CME, the options and futures trading floor remains grounded in floor trading, which accounts for 90% of trades with the remaining 10% occurring electronically. The futures pit, however, has seen the biggest crossover to electronic trading, with approximately 85% of trades taking place on the computer and the remaining ones in the pit.

After the film, Smith, who watched the film alongside his audience, stood at the front of the theatre for a Q&A session. He was asked about his background–he went to art school then found himself doing web design for finance businesses in Chicago, where a friend suggested he make a movie about floor traders. He even dabbled in trading and reached out to his network when casting traders for the film. When asked why former traders were willing to open up about their personal lives on film, he commented that less successful traders are often more likely to talk, while more successful traders remain tighter-lipped. Finally, when asked what impression of traders he wanted to leave with audiences, Smith replied that traders are usually stereotyped as “greedy a**holes”, and he wanted to show that traders are more “dynamic than just that part of their personalities” by offering a “more rounded impression [of traders]” through his film.

****

For information about future Floored showings, click here.

Other related Floored and CME articles include:

Bart Mallon, Esq. of Cole-Frieman & Mallon LLP runs the Hedge Fund Law Blog.  He can be reached directly at 415-868-5345.