Education

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ (AICPA) Revenue Recognition Task Forces have been issuing industry specific guidance related to Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) 606, Revenue from Contracts with Customers. Several of these issues relate specifically to fund managers and should be considered when implementing the new revenue recognition standard. Identification…

A liquidation may present several obstacles to be navigated by the organization, one such obstacle being the accounting. The proper application of Liquidation Basis of Accounting (LBOA) within financial statements can be quite challenging. The goal behind LBOA is to report the amount that an investor may expect to receive after the completion of the…

Changing investor demographics, pressure to boost investment results while also cutting fees, increased competition and the ramifications of potential tax reform will drive significant changes in the hedge fund industry over the next few years. Following are overviews of several key trends that will present new opportunities and new challenges. Success for any hedge fund…

Quantitative finance has become a buzzword of modern finance, though it’s been around for decades. Thanks in no small part to the success and allure of firms like Renaissance Technologies LLC, quant hedge funds ended 2016 at an all-time high of $500 billion under management, according to estimates from Barclays Plc. Quant strategies all use…

Several years ago, I lived along the coast and had this fantastic deck. It had this crazy breeze that always seemed to be blowing across it. I loved that deck, except for one thing. It could get very cold. So, I decided that I needed a space heater to complete my vision of deck-bliss. But…

Institutional investors are beginning to view hedge funds in a new light, according to allocation consultancies. More and more investors are moving away from keeping their hedge funds investments segregated in alternative investment portfolios to are grouping them with the rest of their investments by risk-return drivers. To learn more about this topic click here. 

Commodity Sentiment systematically quantifies the impact of real-time news on investors’ confidence in the commodity price outlook. In this note, we examine three types of commodities are currently supported: gold, crude oil, and natural gas. To learn more about this topic click here.  

A blockchain taxonomy for investors. Blockchain technology is being used in a growing diversity of applications, offering a complex array of investment opportunities. While the technology is so new that any investment in it is speculative, patterns of use are emerging. In this report, we propose a taxonomy to enable investors to more quickly and…

As if the Internal Revenue Code, Treasury Regulations and various federal courts didn’t make taxes complicated and confusing enough, hedge fund and private equity managers must also contend with the varied, and often contradictory, state laws regarding sourcing of income. No unifying principle seems to translate from one jurisdiction to the next with one exception:…

Private equity and hedge fund managers impacted along with state public pension plans Effective Jan. 1, 2017, California’s newly enacted “fee disclosure law” will significantly increase fee disclosure compliance requirements on state public pension (SPP) plans, as well as the private equity and hedge fund managers that seek their capital. The disclosure requirements are extensive…