Are you a “family office?” In general, family offices are entities established by wealthy families to manage their wealth and provide related services. Family offices have generally been exempt from the investment adviser registration requirements of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 (the “Advisers Act”), which otherwise requires persons who act as investment advisers, as defined therein, to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) and comply with certain reporting and other requirements.

Most family offices currently rely on either the “private adviser exemption” set forth in Section 203(b)(3) of the Advisers Act, which exempts from the Advisers Act’s registration requirements an investment adviser with less than 15 clients that does not hold itself out to the public as an investment adviser, or an exemptive order from the SEC, to avoid SEC registration.