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Funds partner, Sam Kay, and senior associate, Ed Ford have featured in Private Equity International discussing the opportunities and challenges presented to the GP-led market by the growing appetite for recapitalisations of small numbers of high-performing assets.

Funds partner, Sam Kay, and Tax partner, Elena Rowlands, have featured in the latest Chambers Global Practice Guides, giving an overview of the investment funds market and discussing alternative investment funds, retail funds and the recent developments relating to legal, regulatory and tax changes.

Our annual briefing highlighting the key 2020 legal developments which impact the funds' industry and previews what can be expected in 2021.

Writing for Private Funds CFO, Funds Senior Associate Ed Ford and Senior Counsel Sacha Gofton-Salmond outline the pros and cons of preferred equity transactions.

In the lead up to Allocate 2020 our funds partner, Sam Kay, discusses how private market investors will align profits with purpose incorporating macro themes into investment decisions and debates how secondaries will redefine the liquidity premium of private capital. He discusses fundraising trends, illiquidity solutions and future proofing your private market strategy with the sustainability agenda.

We believe it is of paramount importance to protect and develop the alternatives asset management industry in the UK following our exit from the EU in order to maintain the UK's status as a world leader in the sector and to ensure that the wider economy continues to benefit from the deployment of global capital across alternatives asset classes by UK based managers.

Finance Partner Katie McMenamin and Funds Senior Associate Ed Ford discuss the bespoke nature of liquidity options available to private equity managers in their Expert Commentary for Private Equity International.  

The global COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented situation that will have a long-term impact on the private fund management industry, stretching beyond the current period of lockdown and altering the way in which private funds are raised and operated. In this article, Travers Smith Funds Partner Sam Kay discusses private fund management issues arising from COVID-19.

In their contribution to the International Comparative Legal Guides, Travers Smith Funds Partner Jeremy Elmore and Head of Tax Emily Clark discuss alternative investment funds in England & Wales.

As investors demands for liquidity are driving funds managers to use the secondaries market in creative ways, Funds Partner, Sam Kay, and Senior Associate, Ed Ford, discuss accessing liquidity in the secondaries market. 

Potential liquidity concerns are dominating private equity managers’ contingency planning for their portfolio investments. Flexible funding solutions provided on a fund-wide basis have emerged as a means for managers to tap additional capital as needed in order to finance working capital or additional equity for their investee companies.

In the context of continued LP scrutiny of all performance indices and management fee levels, GPs/managers continue to seek to differentiate themselves in terms of yield and broader ‘value add’ for investors. Increasingly they are looking to a range of sophisticated fund management and liquidity tools in order to maximise returns and distinguish their offering.

Over the last 4 weeks, in the face of COVID-19 the worldwide economy has experienced the sorts of pressures not seen since the Great Depression. Businesses around the world have been forced to close their doors; we have seen government interventions which, only 3 months ago, would have been unthinkable; and terms such as "social distancing" and "furloughing" have become common parlance.

Alternative assets have enjoyed an unprecedented level of growth over the last decade, which looks set to continue with global AUM growing from $8.8tn in 2017 to a projected $14tn in 2023¹.

Our annual briefing highlighting the key 2019 legal developments which impact the funds' industry and previews what can be expected in 2020.