Friday, March 30 is the deadline for private advisers at hedge funds and private equity firms to register with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission one of the tenets of Dodd-Frank that gives the regulator oversight of private funds.
U.S.-based advisers with more than $150 million in assets under management are required to comply. The SEC is expecting around 1,300 advisers to register, according to Bloomberg.
So-called private funds have previously been exempt from registering with the regulator. Now, only foreign private advisers and advisers to licensed small business investment companies are exempt.
The SEC will collect and report data about the private funds to the Financial Stability Oversight Council in order to assess the potential risk they pose to the financial system. Dodd-Frank also gives state securities regulators the power to monitor mid-sized advisers, those with less than $100 million in assets under management.
The largest private fund advisersthose with $5 billion or more in regulatory assets under management (RAUM)will be required to begin reporting through Form PF by June 15 this year. Those with $150 million to less than $5 billion in RAUM will be required to file by December 15.
A number of sticking points have been raised about Form PF itself. Fund administrator GlobeOp reported, after having prepared test filings of Form PF for its clients, that there was confusion about how to calculate RAUM; the filing format; the vagueness of some questions; and the time it takes to prepare the data.
(CG)