Estudio Legal Bernal acts for Management Companies (ManCo), Authorised Fund Managers (AFMs), investment managers and self-managed funds and their various counterparties to organise and structure investment management activities.

 

 ELB’s work encapsulates all the stages in the investment management cycle and can be categorised into three key categories:

 

Constitutional and commercial

 

  Estudio Legal Bernal works with its clients to develop and draft constitutional documents both for investment firms and investment funds, which includes Prospectuses, Articles of Association, Memoranda of Understanding and Key Investor Information Documents (KIIDs).

 

   The Investment Management Agreement (IMA) is the heart of the matter and ELB can work with either the investment manager or the investor to develop the appropriate investment management and guideline framework.

 

  ELB further acts both for the investment managers or the service providers on arrangements that relate to investment management such as sub-investment management, outsourcing, transfer agency, derivatives trading, prime brokerage, stock lending and repurchase, collateral management, cash sweep, fund dealing, valuation and risk management. 

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Custody & Administration of Assets

 

   Estudio Legal Bernal acts for all the parties that are form part of the custody and administration of investment assets structures: the custodian, the trustee, the administrator, the investment manager or the investment fund itself.

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   It works with these parties to structure the legal, commercial, service level and operational aspects of custody, sub-custody, depositary, administration and transition of assets.

 

Investment Compliance

 

 Estudio Legal Bernal works with its clients to establish compliance programmes and practices and monitor their implementation. It includes standard compliance practices such as Know Your Client (KYC), trade reporting and reconciliation, screening, financial crime prevention including Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Data Protection and Investment Guideline compliance.

 

 Additionally, ELB has particular expertise in specialist compliance practices such as:

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- Outsourcing. for clients that outsource any of their operations or functions, ELB can establish the necessary outsourcing framework and effective oversight over the outsource providers.

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- Business Continuity Planning (BCP). for any sort of business interruptions, whether by natural causes or not, ELB can develop and test practices that eliminate or minimise any interruption to the business operations.

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- Cyber Security. ELB can advise on the development and maintenance of robust cyber security systems and how to test their resilience and effectiveness.

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 ELB further has strong expertise in the regulatory requirements of investment funds that are authorised pursuant to the UCITS (Undertakings for the Collective Investment of Transferable Securities) Regulations or the AIFMD (Alternative Investment Funds Managers Directive).