The SEC Wants to Know if You Are Systemically Important

The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a new rule that would require advisers to private funds to report information for use by the Financial Stability Oversight Council in monitoring risk to the U.S. financial system. Sections 404 and 406 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requires the SEC to gather this information.

The SEC is proposing a new Rule 204(b)-1 under the Investment Advisers Act that would require SEC-registered investment advisers to report systemic risk information on Form PF if they advise one or more private funds.

Each private fund adviser would report basic information about the operations of its private funds on Form PF once each year. Large Private Fund Advisers would be required to submit this basic information each quarter along with additional systemic risk related information required by Form PF concerning certain of their private funds.

“Large Private Fund Advisers” would be

  • Advisers managing hedge funds that collectively have at least $1 billion in assets as of the close of business on any day during the reporting period for the required report;
  • Advisers managing a liquidity fund and having combined liquidity fund and registered money market fund assets of at least $1 billion as of the close of business on any day during the reporting period for the required report; and
  • Advisers managing private equity funds that collectively have at least $1 billion in assets as of the close of business on the last day of the quarterly reporting period for the required report.

The SEC estimates that approximately 4,450 advisers would be required to file Form PF. Of those, approximately 3,920 would be smaller private fund advisers not meeting the thresholds for reporting as Large Private Fund Advisers.

It looks like the definition of private equity fund for purposes of the Large Private Fund Adviser reporting requirements will exclude real estate funds.

Private equity fund:

Any private fund that is not a hedge fund, liquidity fund, real estate fund, securitized asset fund or venture capital fund and does not provide investors with redemption rights in the ordinary course.

Under the proposed rule, real estate private equity funds will be subject to the annual reporting, but not subject to the more detailed quarterly reporting. This is just a proposed rule, so the final requirements and definitions may change in the final rule when it is issued. In the meantime, you can make comments.

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