Funds & Investment Services

Our investment funds lawyers

The jurisdictions in which we operate allow our fund lawyers to facilitate the set-up of funds using vehicles that offer the most tax efficient structuring for our clients and their investors, within a regulatory regime that offers the least onerous obligations whilst maintaining market credibility and a familiar investment structure.

Our offshore investment funds team comprises over 90 lawyers working in each of the world’s leading offshore fund domiciles.

We advise on the structuring of all types of investment funds, investment management and co-investment arrangements, and separate account mandates. We also work across the spectrum of alternative asset classes, including hedge funds, private equity, master feeder structures, private credit funds, loan origination funds, digital asset funds, real estate funds, venture capital funds, infrastructure funds, plus Shari’ah-compliant funds, debt issuance vehicles, mixed debt and equity funds, fund of funds, parallel funds, umbrella funds, life sciences funds, art funds, energy funds, mezzanine funds and hybrid strategies.

Our fund lawyers also advise established funds on their downstream transactional work and financing activities, including M&A transactions and subscription line and NAV facilities. And throughout the life cycle of investment funds, we can provide managers, sponsors and general partners, together with directors, investors and creditors, with access to dispute resolution and regulatory compliance services whenever they are needed.

In each of our markets, we have a powerful team of investment funds lawyers that possess the commercial aptitude, industry knowledge and legal skills necessary to ensure that all our clients’ fund and transaction structures are optimally designed to meet their needs, and the needs of their target investors.

Representative work of our offshore fund lawyers

• Advising a leading top 20 US-based investment manager on the structuring of their distressed asset and private debt funds and the provision of subscription financing to those funds.
• Representing the world’s largest private equity real estate fund investor in relation to numerous transactions including the take private of Max Property Group, the acquisition of Chiswick Park commercial property estate, a joint venture for the Broadgate estate in the City of London and the establishment and sale of the logistics real estate group, Logicor, for EUR12.25 billion.
• Advising a global brokerage and digital assets pioneer on the set up of their crypto fund targeting large cap assets and utilising on-chain analysis.
• Acting for Washington Special Opportunity Fund in the successful defence of a hedge fund on a just and equitable winding up petition alleging lack of probity and conflicts of interest on the part of the manager and directors, and that the fund, which was in soft-wind down, had lost its substratum. Case selected by The Lawyer as one of the leading offshore cases.
• Representing Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets Plc acting as agent for a syndicate of 3 banks in the accession of various sub-funds to, and amendments to, existing subscription facilities of up to EUR4,000,000,000 currently made available to a major Guernsey fund.
• Advising Softbank Vision Fund in the series D financing of Zhejiang Xunshi Technology Co., Ltd, a global high-tech conglomerate focusing on the R&D of 3D printers and materials and the series D financing of Shanghai Keenon Technology Co., Ltd., a leading AI company focusing on indoor intelligent service robot.
• Acting for Marunouchi Innovation Partners Co., Ltd., a company jointly established by Mitsubishi Corporation, MUFG Bank Ltd. and Pavilion Private Equity Co., Ltd. on the successful launch of the USD1 billion Marunouchi Climate Tech Growth Fund L.P.
• Advising Abraaj Credit Managers on their duties owed as manager of Abraaj Global Credit Fund, LP in the context of allegations of possible conflict between its duties as Manager and its alleged actions in working alongside Abraaj Investment Management Limited as part of AIML’s high profile Cayman liquidation, following the revelation that investor funds may have been misused by those in control of the Middle Eastern private equity group.
• Representing Lone Star Funds on financing its GBP250 million acquisition of Quercus Healthcare Property Unit Trust (as part of its wider acquisition of the Quercus Healthcare Fund from Aviva Investors).
• Advising on the structuring of a USD1.2 billion African infrastructure fund focusing on energy transportation, water, sanitation, communication and health sectors.
• Acting for Integral ILS Ltd., an independent alternative fund manager focused on insurance-linked strategies in connection with a significant cornerstone investment.
• Representing Credit Suisse London Nominees (acting by receivers) in just and equitable winding up proceedings. These were one of the largest and highest profile investment fund disputes that the Cayman Islands has seen in recent years. This is the first time in the common law world that winding up proceedings have been brought successfully by receivers appointed over shares – removing a major impediment for beneficial owners.
• Advising a USD2.8 billion Cayman PE fund that invests in growth or expansion stage private companies in the technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) industry.
• Acting for Tritax Big Box REIT plc, a listed real estate fund, on its launch, listing on the Channel Islands Stock Exchange and various acquisitions.
• Re Seahawk China Dynamic Fund: Seven-day trial of a just and equitable petition for the winding up of a USD400m Fund, involving allegations of dishonest breaches of fiduciary duty relating to alterations to performance fee payments, late trade allocations by way of ‘rat trading’/‘cherry picking’ of trades as between competing funds managed by the same investment manager, and with trading accounts at the same prime broker.
• Assisting an innovative US-based asset manager with the structuring of their fund facilitating exposure to listed crypto markets.
• Advising a world leading investment banking and capital markets firm in relation to the set-up of multiple private credit funds.
• Representing numerous institutional investors in their defence of voidable preference claims brought by the liquidators of the Weavering Macro Fixed Income Fund.
• Assisting in the structuring of a fund investing in innovative and disruptive technologies, services, applications and products across the high-tech, fintech, blockchain, artificial intelligence and cleantech sectors.
• Advising a leading global investment manager in the set of their fund targeting decentralised physical infrastructure assets.
• Assisting a Cayman fund in seeking to recover circa GBP9 million of misappropriated investors’ funds.