Ulmer & Berne provides a full range of legal services to clients in the financial services industry. Our clients include investment companies, investment advisers, broker-dealers, venture capital and hedge funds, banks and trust companies, insurance companies, pension plans and consultants, and other industry participants. In addition to its technical expertise, Ulmer & Berne’s Regulatory Compliance practice provides high-quality, pragmatic, prompt and cost-effective legal advice to its financial services clients.
Our interdisciplinary approach to counseling clients combines the knowledge of lawyers familiar with the federal and state securities laws, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), the Internal Revenue Code, commodities regulation, and federal and state banking and insurance laws. Several of our attorneys have worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), investment management firms, banks, broker-dealers, and insurance companies, enabling us to provide practical insight into handling legal matters for our clients.
In our practice, we:
- Form, register, and represent investment companies, hedge funds, investment advisers and counsel clients on regulatory compliance matters;
- Represent clients with respect to regulatory and investigatory matters including SEC enforcement proceedings, OCC and OTS enforcement proceedings, CFTC enforcement proceedings, proceedings instituted by the securities divisions of states and white-collar criminal proceedings as well as proceedings instituted by the NASD and the various stock exchanges;
- Counsel public companies on Sarbanes-Oxley issues;
- Analyze, and where appropriate, obtain informal or formal guidance from regulatory authorities on a broad range of banking, broker-dealer and investment adviser and investment company compliance issues;
- Develop and review compliance guidelines for regulated entities;
- Counsel clients on sales, acquisitions and mergers of financial institutions, investment advisers and funds;
- Structure entities and transactions to avoid regulation and registration under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and Investment Advisers Act of 1940; and
- Assist and advise public companies in making required filings with the SEC and other regulatory agencies.