Investment Products & Asset Management

Blakes Investment Products & Asset Management lawyers are among the profession’s most experienced in advising clients in the investment management industry, including portfolio managers, investment fund managers, investment dealers, wealth management companies, financial institutions, service providers such as prime brokerages, investors such as pension funds, as well as Canada’s principal securities regulators.

Specifically, we have played a leading role in structuring and implementing domestic and international funds, including open-end funds, closed-end funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), flow-through funds, hedge funds, pooled funds, segregated funds, commodity pools and other complex investment structures, including exchange-traded notes (ETNs), undertakings for collective investment in transferable securities (UCITS), derivative-based transactions and other innovative financial products, including Special Purpose Acquisition Corporations (SPACs).

Our team is particularly skilled in providing sophisticated advice on capital markets activities, including public and exempt offerings, listings of ETFs and ETNs on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), compliance and registration matters, sales and marketing issues, continuous disclosure issues, and governance and regulatory compliance matters, to some of the industry’s best-known and most active participants. On behalf of these participants, we have advised on the launch of over 190 closed-end funds listed on the TSX. We also regularly act as part of multidisciplinary teams advising buyers and sellers in acquisitions and divestitures involving investment management businesses.

In addition to advising many of Canada’s leading financial institutions, Blakes has led the way in acting on behalf of foreign banks bringing structured note platforms to Canada and has advised with respect to the marketing and sale of UCITS products in Canada.

In an era of dramatic regulatory change, we remain intimately involved in industry and regulatory initiatives and are committed to ensuring that our clients are attuned to the impact that these changes may have on their businesses. We have represented the Canadian Securities Administrators in the substantial reformulation of the securities regulations and policies, including, in particular, National Instrument 81-102 – Mutual Funds and National Instrument 81-104 – Commodity Pools. We have also advised the TSX on the reformulation of policies and procedures for regulation-listed issuers.

Focused on investment funds and asset management, a key advantage of our group is the seamless integration of specialized expertise relevant to clients in this sector, including corporate finance and securities regulation, tax, derivatives, banking, and financial institutions matters.