We provide accounting, tax and consulting services to private equity firms, hedge and private equity funds and venture capital funds. Our services to these clients include audits of financial statements, custody examinations, agreed upon procedures on historical performance results, accounting administrative services, income tax planning, tax compliance services, consulting on regulatory compliance, and strategic business planning services.
Hedge and Private Equity Funds
We currently audit over 60 funds and frequently encounter the types of issues that registered and non-registered investment funds may encounter, such as valuing investments on a fair value basis, allocations made to general and limited partners, and industry reporting matters specific to investment companies. We have extensive experience dealing with long/short and timing based hedge funds, real estate funds, fund of funds and master/feeder structures. We monitor regulatory developments from agencies including the SEC and pro-actively keep our clients informed of resulting changes.
Almost half of our investment company client base is comprised of real estate fund structures. We have experience with underlying valuations of real estate investments and the related reporting issues. Our real estate fund clients work with a diverse base of developers typically through joint ventures. Our team brings significant expertise in understanding property fair value waterfalls and the use of capitalization rates to determine property values depending upon the region, class and type of property.
Our tax team has experience in multistate tax issues, such as nexus and apportionment/allocation of income and the reporting requirements for financial interests in foreign bank accounts. We also provide individual income tax return services for individuals who are invested in these types of funds. We have experience in the special filing requirements for these funds at the individual level.
Venture Capital Funds
We provide audit, tax, and consulting services to venture capital funds throughout the United States. Our firm works extensively with privately held businesses, many with revenues in the range of $20 million to $500 million. As a result, our clients are often targeted by private equity groups. We have therefore developed relationships with many private equity firms to facilitate transaction closings and allow us to provide our venture capital funds with the expertise to assist with appropriate valuations of their underlying holdings in portfolio companies.
Services to Fund Managers and Registered Investment Advisors
Many of the fund managers and registered investment advisors that engage Keiter to perform audits do so to satisfy the custody requirements under SEC Rules 204 and 206 (“Custody Rule”). A lower cost alternative could be a custody examination if the fund operating or limited partnership agreement does not have an audit requirement. The Custody Rule requires registered investment advisors to engage a CPA firm that is registered with and subject to regular inspection by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. We currently provide examination services to 13 RIA’s in compliance with the Custody Rule including the surprise security examination requirement as well as reporting on internal controls for those advisors deemed to be “qualified” custodians.
To facilitate capital raising efforts by new fund managers we offer agreed upon procedures on historical performance results. Many new managers start funds based on investment opportunities from their personal portfolios. In order to provide potential investors with a third party verification of their past performance, we assist new fund managers with an independent verification of past performance. The procedures are formalized and documented in a formal report in compliance with attestation standards and can be used in marketing packages for new fund launches.
On a limited basis, we also provide accounting administration services to fund managers. These services include maintaining partner capital schedules, assistance in maintaining books and records including developing fair value methodologies, and preparation of financial statements in accordance with investment company standards as prescribed by GAAP.
We also provide services to private equity firms during their due diligence process.
