Private Equity
Barton has decades of experience representing private companies, institutional investors, and private equity funds. As a partner to our clients, we help them to form and launch their funds, identify opportunities, execute transactions, and manage post-investment challenges. We offer an extensive network that delivers value from both business and legal perspectives. We maintain significant relationships with the asset managers and industry pioneers that play an important role in the development of new products and markets, as well as in the repositioning, acquisition, and divestiture of established and transitioning businesses. Our private equity practice is supported by leading experts on our intellectual property, tax, litigation, bankruptcy, and employment teams. Barton is an effective and efficient outside general counsel to equity sponsors’ portfolio companies at the venture capital and private equity stage. We provide an efficient alternative to large equity sponsors’ usual outside counsel, while bringing more diverse experience and greater resources than a small in-house law department.
Hedge Funds
Barton’s hedge fund practice combines our firm’s traditional strengths with attorneys who have significant industry experience, including the former Chief Financial Officer and Chief Compliance Officer for a leading private fund manager and a former FINRA Compliance Examiner. Our team works to provide clients with experienced, practical advice and access to a range of disciplines. Our sophisticated team has launched hedge funds using the full spectrum of investment strategies.
We also assist fund managers in a broad range of business ventures, including the negotiation, modification, and termination of seed capital arrangements; acquisition of new investment strategies through employment, business acquisitions, and joint ventures; and private equity investments in advisory entities. Our team’s industry knowledge provides an invaluable perspective on the challenges and opportunities facing participants in the hedge fund management industry. This experience makes Barton particularly effective in structuring, negotiating, and documenting complex fund structures and tailoring the associated contractual agreements with investment professionals, trading counterparties, investors, and third-party service providers. We assist with the establishment of prime brokerage and other trading relationships and structure and document derivatives transactions.
We provide counsel regarding intricate business arrangements that are subject to increasingly complex—and often dynamic—cross-border legal, tax, and regulatory regimes. We leverage our various practice groups (employment, intellectual property, tax, litigation, and bankruptcy) in providing a full range of services to hedge fund management groups.
Once the funds are operational, Barton provides transactional-focused services utilizing the firm’s capabilities in such areas as mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, and energy. Our bankruptcy and creditors’ rights attorneys provide their services relating to distressed credit strategies, due diligence, credit facilities, and issues that arise in bankruptcy filings. We regularly represent funds in the acquisition or divestiture of distressed assets, debt, and claims.
In addition to our representation of hedge fund management groups, Barton provides legal services to institutional investors.
Venture Capital
Barton’s Venture Capital team has extensive experience advising venture capital funds and emerging growth companies. We are dedicated to creating value for early-stage companies and investors. We offer innovative and practical solutions for clients throughout the entire business lifecycle, from structuring and formation to financing, growth, development, and scaling their companies and funds.
As entrepreneurs, investors, and executives ourselves, we intimately understand the challenges and opportunities that emerging companies and venture investors must navigate to attain success. Barton attorneys are dedicated to creating value for early-stage clients. We strive to support early and late-stage clients throughout the entire business lifecycle, from structuring and formation to financing, growth, development, and scaling their companies. Barton has advised on thousands of Series Seed, A, B, C, D, and convertible debt financings for venture funds and emerging growth companies. Our team’s diverse business backgrounds enable us to offer unique, practical solutions that drive client success. Our goal is to equip clients to secure the capital to build and expand their businesses. Our team’s business acumen enables us to anticipate and fulfill each client’s business needs from launch to scale to realization. We work with clients to optimize fund structures, boost returns, and enhance transactional efficiency.
Our venture capital team collaborates closely with our private equity, tax, intellectual property, and corporate finance attorneys to provide complete legal solutions. We offer a multi-faceted perspective to help venture capital clients effectively evaluate market trends and make sound investment decisions. From fund formation to fundraising and deal structuring, our team supports our clients’ success and the success of their portfolio companies.
Broker-Dealers
Barton attorneys have a long history of working with broker-dealers to navigate compliance and regulatory issues that have the potential to affect their day-to-day business. Our services include broker-dealer formation, broker-dealer sales and acquisitions, employment and termination of registered representatives, and counsel during any FINRA investigations. If the need arises, our attorneys will zealously represent our clients in all FINRA-related litigation and enforcement proceedings. Our attorneys draw upon a broad base of experience in the broker-dealer, regulatory, and advisory areas. Barton’s clients benefit from our ability to draw upon the knowledge of our attorneys in other practice areas to provide our broker-dealer clients with a full complement of legal services.
Registered Investment Advisors
Barton attorneys frequently act as counsel for registered investment advisors (RIAs) in respect to all aspects of the advisory practice. With the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) and individual states’ constantly growing regulatory jurisdictions, Barton sets the standard in assisting our clients with the legal and compliance aspects of maintaining a successful practice. Barton assists all sizes of RIAs, from those that are local and independent to some of the largest affiliated practices in the country. Our team regularly represents clients in all matters related to fund and asset management, strategic planning, SEC and Department of Justice enforcement, compliance, audits, investigations, and fiduciary obligations. Barton’s RIA team consists of seasoned transactional counsel who take the lead in formation, structure, and funding issues as well as litigators who defend claims against and advocate on behalf of RIAs in multiple jurisdictions throughout the country. Our legal services for RIAs include:
- Fund structure and formation
- Performance fees
- Performance disclosures; federal securities regulation Section 206(4); solicitation fee agreements
- Customer account structures (including wrap fee issues)
- Conflicts of interest
- 1934 Act Section 28(e) and soft dollars
- Form ADV disclosure issues
- Regulatory examinations; audits; SEC and SRO inquiries
- Market surveillance and enforcement investigations and proceedings
- Wells Act submissions
- Arbitrations and mediations
Regulatory Compliance
Securities firms are highly regulated, and it is relatively easy for a securities firm and/or its employees to inadvertently fail to observe certain requirements. In addition, regulators are under increasing pressure to extract heavy penalties, most often in the form of a monetary fine, for even the slightest infractions committed by a securities firm and/or its employees. The attorneys in Barton’s Securities Regulatory Group realize that individuals employed in the securities industry want to focus on the business at hand and not waste precious resources dealing with extraneous regulatory matters. We counsel our clients so that interactions with regulators are as smooth as possible. The Securities Regulatory Group is called upon to advise clients on matters that are directly related to their securities activities, including:
- Formation and Capital Structure
- Membership Applications
- Registration Issues
- Floor Trading Violations
- Examinations, Investigations, and Enforcement Proceedings
Clients also request the Securities Regulatory Group to provide counsel in many of the following areas:
- Procedures, Policies, and Programs
- Written Supervisory Procedures
- Anti-Money Laundering Procedures
- Continuing Education Programs
- Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Plans
Employment and Registration:
- Employment and Consulting Agreements
- Forms BD, U-4, and U-5
- Licensing, Registrations, and Disqualifications
- Wrongful Termination