Michael Lewitt
Editor, Sure Money and Author
Credit Strategist

• Impact of the election on the alternative investment industry
• Assessing the current state of the market, and what has changed over the past year
• Near- and middle-term roadmap for where the marked is headed
• Alternative investment strategy trends – what’s working and what’s not
  • Strategies into which capital is flowing now
• How and why alternative investment operations have evolved over time
• What will operations look like a year from now? Five years from now?
• Evaluating the current and near-term job market for operations professionals
• Fee trends
• Assessing when investors are willing to pay stated fees and when to expect investors to try to renegotiate fees

Panelists:

Winston M. Paes
Chief, Business and Securities Fraud Section
U.S. Attorney’s Office, E.D.N.Y.

James R. Reese
CFE, Assistant Director
Office of Risk Analysis and Surveillance, OCIE, SEC

Jessica M. Weissman
Assistant Director – Asset Management Unit Division of Enforcement
SEC

Alexander Wilson
Deputy Chief, Money Laundering and Asset Forfeiture Unit,
U.S. Attorney's Office, S.D.N.Y.

Moderator: TBD

• Impact of the election on the regulatory and enforcement paradigm
• Regulatory perspectives on recent compliance failures and what the industry should take away from them
• SEC enforcement, examination, and inspection priorities and expectations
  • Cybersecurity
  • Expense allocation
  • Valuation methodologies, policies and procedures
  • Firms that have yet to be examined
• Assessing the ‘broken windows’ approach to compliance and enforcement
• SEC National Exam Analytics Tool (NEAT)
• - Impact on hedge fund examinations and enforcement initiatives
• SEC Asset Management Unit
  • When does this unit get involved?
  • What are they looking for?
    • Key focus points, initiatives, and concerns
• New developments in trading practice enforcement
  • Spoofing and layering
• SEC perspectives on the possibility of requiring investment advisers to pay for third party compliance reviews
• DOJ priorities and enforcement trends
• FCPA and bribery issues
• Insider trading
• AML concerns
• Beneficial owners and the difficulties related to identification of beneficial owners
• Agency perspectives on outsourcing aspects of compliance
• The use of leverage by hedge funds

Yehuda M. Braunstein
Partner
Sadis & Goldberg LLP

• New areas of concern and heightened scrutiny for investors
  • Red flags that will turn investors away
• Trends in investor due diligence
• How investors’ expectations and requirements are changing
• Has investor tolerance for risk changed significantly?
• Are investors concerned about the sources of a fund’s assets?
• Where is the new generation of investors going to come from?
• Best practices for ensuring that investors are comfortable with your firm

Panelists:

David Bradley
CFA, CAIA, COO and CCO
Hawk Ridge Partners

Charles Friedberg
CFA, President and COO
Argentem Creek Partners LP

Kurt Spero
Citrine Capital Management

Moderator:

Dan Strachman
Co-Founder
Operations for Altertnatives

• What are funds hearing from investors in terms of operations and compliance issues?
• Chief concerns of COOs
  • Regulatory issues?
  • Investor pressures?
• What policies, processes, and procedures have been the most effective and beneficial?
• Key challenges and how to overcome them
• Day-to-day activities and responsibilities of COOs and their teams
• Best practices and success stories for raising capital
• How smaller firms with limited resources can remain profitable while satisfying regulators and investors

Panelists:

Todd Cipperman
Founding Principal
Cipperman Compliance Services

Meredith Moss
CEO and Founder
Finomial

Brynn Rail
Counsel
Ropes & Gray LLP

Moderator:

Paul Marino
MARINO PARTNERS LLP

• Practical advice and feedback relating to recent SEC examinations
  • What questions are SEC examiners asking?
• What are the focus areas of the SEC and what are they looking for?
• FinCEN’s proposed AML regulatory requirements for alternative investment firms
  • Who is covered by the proposed rule and who is not?
  • What is or will be required and expected?
  • Operational and reporting requirements
  • Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs)
    • Red flags that might signal suspicious activity
  • Best practices
• Insider trading – recent enforcement actions, Salman and its potential impact, emerging trends, and best practices for mitigating the risks of insider trading at your firm
• FCPA and bribery issues
  • Ensuring compliance
• Developing best practices for managing FATCA requirements
  • Overcoming the hurdles and avoiding the pitfalls associated with FATCA
  • Applicability of FATCA to U.S. entities
• Overcoming the hurdles relating to AIFMD regulation
• Impact of increased regulatory costs on alternatives and alpha generation
• The keys to operating a profitable and compliant alternative investment firm
• Using a strong, comprehensive compliance program to set you apart from your competitors and help raise capital

Adrian Sales
Head of Operational Due Diligence
Albourne America LLC

Marc van Breda
Global Head of Operational Due Diligence
LGT Capital Partners

• How has ODD changed over the last year?
• Assessing the trend towards greater transparency
• Top 5 new requests from investors relating to ODD
• Key topics arising in ODD reviews
  • What are the big institutional clients’ concerns, expectations, and interests?
• Addressing investor concerns relating to cybersecurity and data privacy
• Managing investor expectations
• What are funds providing to investors and when?
• What are funds not providing to investors?
• To whom do investors have access?
• Improving the efficiency of the ODD process
• Regulatory compliance and its impact on due diligence issues
• Best practices for preparing for and responding to an ODD visit in the current climate
  • Pitfalls to avoid
• The ‘bad actors’ rule and its impact on diligence on investors

Panelists:

Maury Cartine
Partner-In-Charge National Alternative Investment Industry Group Tax Department
Marcum LLP

Adam Freedman
Chief Compliance Officer
Angelo Gordon & Co.

Adam J. Reback
Chief Compliance Officer
J. Goldman & Co., L.P.

Moderator: TBD

• Fee and expense allocation
• Investment allocation
• Best practices for determining how to allocate fees and expenses and how to allocate investment opportunities
• Trade allocations
  • How trades are allocated
  • Assessing the equity of trade allocations
  • Identifying potential conflicts
• DOL fiduciary responsibility rule
  • Impact on hedge funds
  • Making the necessary adjustments to comply with the new rule
    • Documentation
  • What have other hedge funds done?
  • Best practices relating to plans and participants covered by the new rule
• Potential conflicts involving service providers
• Identifying and tracking potential conflicts
• Conflict disclosure
  • Best practices for disclosing conflicts and potential conflicts
  • Pitfalls to avoid

Panelists:

Oliver Bell
Partner, Corporate and Commercial Investment Funds
Harneys, BVI

Adam D. Greenwood
Partner
Ropes & Gray LLP

Brian Sapadin
Executive Director – Hedge Fund Services
GlobeTax

• Best practices for structuring your company in order to minimize your tax burden
• Considerations that can impact your tax strategy
• Implications of increasingly complicated and difficult tax processing
  • Impact on operations
• FATCA issues
• Self-employment tax
• Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS)
• Tax considerations for U.S.-domiciled firms that are interested in entering the EU marketplace
• Tax implications that arise from inversions
• Foreign dividend withholding tax and reclaim opportunities
• Master feeder structure & Cayman LLC
• Recent rate changes and trends

Panelists:

Steve Bruce
Managing Partner
ASC Advisors, LLC

• Understanding the enemy: who is motivated to go after investment management companies and what are they likely to do?
• Realistic, implementable, and budget-conscious cybersecurity strategies for investment management companies based on scale and available capital
• Importance of and best practices for third-party due diligence
• Meeting the challenge of enhanced regulatory cybersecurity standards
• Sifting through the noise emanating from government and media outlets and determining what you really need to do to protect your firm and your clients
• Using a risk-based and economic-based approach to cybersecurity in order to strike the right balance for your firm
  • Assessing your risk
• Incorporating lessons learned from previous cyber attacks as well as recommendations of federal and state agencies
• Implementing sufficient testing and verification procedures
• Ensuring that your employees are an integral part of your cybersecurity efforts
• Developing a cyber incident response plan
• Assessing the available preventive technologies and deciding what’s best for your firm
• Cyber liability insurance considerations

Panelists:

Gaetano T. DiPietro
Director, Client Service Management
BlackRock

John Pizzi
CEO
BaseVenture

• Integrating functionality across different groups, specifically operations, compliance, and risk management, in order to increase efficiency and reduce costs
  • Cross-functionality best practices
• New and emerging risks in the alternative investment landscape
• Using third-party data to help mitigate risk
• Service provider offerings and technologies that can assist firms in managing multiple risks
• Specific risk types and how to minimize your firm’s exposure to them
• Best practices for managing fund expenses
• Cost-shifting considerations
• Achieving ‘operational alpha’
  • Practical strategies for maximizing operational efficiency and excellence while reducing costs
• Selection of custodians
  • Determining which administrator is right for your firm
• Trends in organizational structures
• Staffing considerations
• Having a single CCO/COO versus a separate CCO and COO
• How to leverage the operations team to run multiple funds

Panelists:

Romulad Beneche CPA
Vice President – Business Development
Gemini Hedge

Ankur Jain
Managing Partner, COO
Falchion Capital Management

Moderator:

Jay Levy
Partner, Financial Services Industry Practice Leader
CohnReznick LLP

• Due diligence considerations
• Potential cost savings from outsourcing
• Pitfalls to avoid
• Assessing the specific costs and benefits associated with outsourcing of key functions
  • Compliance
    • To what degree should this be done?
    • Achieving the proper balance of in-house versus outsourced compliance functions
    • Outsourcing the CCO function
  • Trading

Amy Tarlowe
COO
Alpine Global Management, LLC

William Capuzzi
Chief Executive Officer
Apex Clearing

• Tracking the evolution of prime broker criteria and requirements relating to bringing in new clients
• What is the current threshold for potential clients?
• Impact of the evolving prime brokerage model on alternative investment firms
  • How are funds dealing with their prime brokers?
  • Best practices for negotiating with primer brokers
  • New strategies and trends that prime brokers are seeing
  • How banks are thinking about prime brokerage and what funds should consider, given the new regulatory environment
• How new balance sheet requirements, as well as heightened AML and KYC oversight, are impacting banks and their relationships with hedge funds and PE
  • Financing and leveraging issues
• Cash management considerations

Panelists:

Joshua Barlow
Head of Accounting & Operational Due Diligence
PAAMCO

• Overcoming the challenges associated with proper valuation of illiquid assets
• Assuaging regulatory and investor concern relating to valuation issues
  • Ensuring adequate transparency in your firm’s valuation procedures
• Valuation of Level 3 assets
  • Assessing the assumptions and expectations on which such valuations are based
• Using third-party assessors to assist with valuation determinations
• Comparing the hedge fund approach to valuation with the PE approach

Panellists:

Paul Ellis
Head of Product Solutions - Regulatory Change
HSBC Securities Services

Derbhil O’Riordan
Partner
Dillon & Eustace

• Impact of Brexit
• Assessing and understanding EU regulatory and tax regimes
  • Common pitfalls and misunderstandings
• Private placements
  • How this is done and in which markets
• Which strategies are working now?
• Updates on AIFMD
  • Key requirements
  • Structures that are working for U.S. funds
  • Hurdles and pitfalls
• UCITS V
  • Increased regulatory hurdles and enhanced restrictions
  • Tax benefits of UCITS funds over off-shore funds
• European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR)
• Developments in Europe relating to pooling of assets
• Re-domiciling from offshore to Ireland in order to have easier access to the European market
• Examining developments in Ireland’s alternative investment market
• Tax Transparent Funds

EMERGING MARKETS

• Overview of the markets in China, India, and Saudi Arabia
• Assessing the emerging environment in China
  • How are funds investing in China?
  • Restrictions
• Issues arising from the flow of capital into and out of Asian markets
  • Increased focus on taxation issues
• Why global regulators, especially in Hong Kong and Singapore, are paying close attention to the UCITS model
• Fast-tracking trade agreements