Michael Butowsky has more than 25 years of experience providing securities regulatory and transactional legal advice to a broad spectrum of financial services industry participants, including investment advisers, private investment funds, broker-dealers, registered investment companies, and others. His practice focuses principally on: investment advisers (including registration, disclosure, and trading issues); the formation of and ongoing regulation of private investment funds (such as hedge funds, private equity funds, and venture capital funds); advising broker-dealers with respect to soft dollar arrangements; and advising financial services industry participants and operating companies with respect to investment company, investment adviser, and broker-dealer "status" issues.

Michael's investment management work includes advising registered and unregistered investment advisers concerning: SEC registration and exemptions (including issues under Dodd-Frank and Form ADV disclosure); compliance matters such as best execution and soft dollars, trading issues (e.g., principal transactions, trade allocations, trade sequencing, and directed brokerage), insider trading, conflicts of interest, custody arrangements, performance advertising, and valuation; SEC examinations; and annual compliance reviews. He also advises with respect to the organization of investment advisers (including joint ventures) and purchases and sales of investment advisers, including the relevant assignment and consent/proxy issues.

Michael works with clients on all legal and regulatory aspects of private investment fund formation, marketing, and operation. He has worked on a broad variety of structures, investment objectives, and strategies, including master-feeder and parallel funds, funds of funds, long/short, arbitrage, leveraged buyout, real estate, global, opportunity, and distressed debt, as well as sectors (e.g., technology) and countries (e.g., emerging markets, Brazil, China, and India).