N America News April 2017

NORTHAMERICANEWS / APRIL 2017 45 Dedicated to the Alternative Asset Management Industry g Company: LoPresti Law Group, PC Name: Marc X. LoPresti, Esq. Email: [email protected] Web Address: www.loprestilawgroup.com Telephone: +1 (212) 732-4029 LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor to ’40 Act and other institutional global REIT portfolios with over $400m in discretionary assets under management. Marc’s executive roles with these asset management concerns provide daily insight into the challenges faced by both the buy and sell side of LLG’s clients, both in raising assets and staying competitive (sell side), to finding/ vetting/allocating to investment strategies and managers that have identified pockets of ever-elusive alpha in modern securities markets (buy side). Talk me through the hedge fund industry in your region currently? Are there any specific challenges or outside influences affecting it? Raising capital and finding alpha are the biggest challenges facing fund managers. Tell me about your region, and why you believe this is the ideal base for your company? NYC is still the financial capital of the world. Not much else to say. With this in mind, what is your approach to hiring staff? How do you attract the very best talent to your business? We try to hire associates and clerical staff that have some form of non-legal Wall Street experience. We want our people to have the same practical, business-oriented approach to the practice of law that LLG’s founder has brought to the asset management industry for almost two decades. We attract talented people by providing them with the kind of direct experience that only a boutique firm can provide. What does the future hold for your business? Are there any specific projects or major developments on the horizon that you would be willing to share with us? We expect to see ongoing migration of alternative fund strategies into the ’40 Act space, and changes in the capital raising processes with institutional investors continuing to reduce exposure to hedge funds and the increasing popularity of turn-key asset management platforms (TAMPs) assisting the so-called ‘democratization’ of the hedge fund industry. Like most in the industry, we will be watching carefully to see what changes lay in store to the US regulatory landscape that may result from a more business-friendly Trump administration.