Considerations When Winding Down Funds: Navigating Illiquid Assets, Unanticipated Windfalls and Fees and Expenses During Liquidation (Part Two of Two)

Once a manager decides to wind down a fund, it must navigate myriad considerations and decisions during the process. The manager needs to disclose the wind-down to investors at the outset without triggering liabilities to service providers or diminishing asset values, and the fund needs to retain appropriate personnel and working capital to perform a wind-down that could take months or even years to complete. To address these and other issues that arise when winding down a fund, the Hedge Fund Law Report recently interviewed Michael C. Neus, senior fellow in residence with the Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement at New York University School of Law and former managing partner and general counsel of Perry Capital, LLC. This second article in our two-part series analyzes how illiquid assets should be treated during a wind-down; what fees can and should responsibly be charged to investors; and how managers should allocate an unanticipated windfall received after the wind-down is completed. The first article in the series described the roles that a fund’s general counsel and chief compliance officer play in the wind-down, as well as best practices for communicating the decision to wind down to service providers and investors. For more on considerations when winding down a fund in the Cayman Islands, see “How Can Investors in Cayman Hedge Funds Maximize Protection of Their Investments When the Fund Is Near or at the End of Its Life? (Part One of Two)” (Dec. 5, 2013); and our two-part series on navigating the loss of a fund’s substratum requirement: “Analysis of the Conflicting Cayman Islands Standards” (Jan. 5, 2017); and “Steps to Ensure a Fund’s Soft Wind-Down Does Not Result in a Winding-Up Order” (Jan. 12, 2017).

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