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Asset Management & Investment Funds

William Fry’s Asset Management and Funds Department is recognised for innovation and technical excellence in complex, high-value fund mandates and for advising on landmark transactions.

We advise leading domestic and international fund sponsors, fund service providers, and financial institutions on sophisticated work spanning regulated fund products, private markets and alternative investment structures and asset management regulation. Our team combines deep regulatory expertise with commercial, solutions-driven, advice. We are known for pioneering first-of-kind structures and delivering practical and pragmatic advice and solutions to complex problems—a reputation reflected both in consecutive awards for innovation and ongoing mandates for complex funds advisory matters.

William Fry’s Investment Funds Department is best known for:

Trusted Advisory Role: Serving as a reliable advisor to several of the world’s largest asset managers for their flagship products and core legal and regulatory requirements.
Innovation and Recognition in the Market: Being continuously recognised in the market for our innovative and complex work. Our pioneering work has led to significant awards including recognition at the FT Innovative Lawyer Awards Europe, Professional Services Management Awards, ETF Stream Awards.
Private markets expertise: Our practice is increasingly advising sponsors, managers and institutional investors on funds matters in the private markets sector. Our experience and deep expertise spans private credit, private equity (including VC), real estate and infrastructure.
Landmark mandates: We are instructed on some of the most high profile and sophisticated mandates in the market across a diverse range of investment management sector entities and licence types, from business set-ups and regulatory change projects to financial services and M&A.
Leading Practitioners: Our practitioners are active and highly regarded in the funds industry, speaking at local and international conferences, regularly presenting wide-reaching webinars, and contributing to valued industry publications in the space. We are active members of a wide range of valuable industry working groups, working closely on an ongoing basis between industry bodies and the local and European regulators to shape the regulatory landscape in our area.
Thought Leadership in EU Sustainable Finance: Providing cutting-edge, commercial, solutions-oriented advice on the EU Sustainable Finance regime tailored to individual managers’ and institutional investors’ ESG objectives and commitments.

Vincent Coyne

Partner

James Phelan

Partner

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Experience

Recent significant deals include advising:

a range of leading global and domestic UCITS and AIF providers on compliance with the significant prospectus and website disclosure obligations imposed by the Sustainable Finance Disclosures Regulation (SFDR) Level 2 measures which took effect on 1 January 2023.
BlackRock on the establishment of a comprehensive range of highly publicised ETFs with an ESG/SRI focus on their flagship iShares platforms, which consists of over 350 ETFs over seven separate UCITS ETF platforms.
Mercer on all aspects of its legal and regulatory obligations applicable to its full range of Irish authorised schemes including two retail umbrella (UCITS) platforms, two qualifying investor (QIAIF) umbrella platforms and one professional investor fund (PIF) platform on an extensive reclassification project whereby a suite of funds were transitioned to become sustainable funds under the SFDR.
Irish Residential Properties REIT plc (IRES REIT) on the regulatory aspects of insourcing the management of IRES REIT.
Legal & General Investment Management on the establishment of the first newly established ETF tracking “EU Paris-aligned” benchmark indices.

Areas of Expertise

All of our team’s practitioners work exclusively on funds matters and our Partners are all recognised industry leaders in their field. We currently serve on ten separate Irish Funds working groups responsible for raising and developing Ireland’s profile as a leading fund domicile, including:

Legal &Regulatory
Sustainable Finance
Asset Management Regulation
Depositary
UCITS Innovation & Regulation
Product Distribution (covering principal markets for product distribution)
Investment Limited Partnership legislative reform

Related Areas

Banking & Finance

Tax

Financial Regulation

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Additional Offerings

In addition to having one of the largest legal teams dedicated to asset management and investment funds-related matters, William Fry is also known for providing perhaps the most rounded of all relevant offerings within the Dublin market with our Asset Management and Investment Funds Department also including:

a dedicated Funds Company Secretarial team (consisting of 5 full-time professionals, including some of the most senior Funds Company Secretaries available in the Dublin market);
a sophisticated Global Fund Registrations Solutions service; and
an Irish Stock Exchange Listing Sponsor team.