New York fund centre guide

New York

Operational centre of the alternative investment industry and the deepest pool of capital in the world. Managers, allocators and the counterparties they trade with sit within a few blocks of one another in Manhattan.

The funds themselves are formed elsewhere. Delaware is the domicile for most onshore structures, usually a limited partnership, on the strength of a specialised business court and a settled body of corporate law that sponsors and investors already know. New York limited partnerships exist but are the exception. A manager raising from both United States taxable investors and everyone else will often run a Delaware feeder alongside an offshore one into a common master. Regulation is federal rather than state, so a manager here answers to Washington rather than Albany, and what is registered is the adviser rather than the fund.

Regulators

Securities and Exchange Commission

SEC·Federal regulator · United States·Washington DC

Federal securities regulator, founded in response to the Great Depression, with a mandate to protect investors from misconduct, promote fairness and efficiency in the securities markets, and facilitate capital formation. Registers and examines investment advisers, runs the EDGAR filing system and brings enforcement actions through its own Division of Enforcement.

sec.gov

Commodity Futures Trading Commission

CFTC·Federal regulator · United States·Washington DC

Federal regulator for derivatives, covering trading and clearing organisations, swap data repositories, intermediaries and market surveillance under the Commodity Exchange Act. Managers running futures, swaps or other derivatives strategies fall under it alongside their securities registration, and the two commissions increasingly coordinate rather than duplicate.

cftc.gov

Fund structures

Last verified 28 August 2026

Registered investment adviser

Full registration with the federal regulator on Form ADV, and the default for managers above the assets threshold. The fund itself is not registered; the adviser is.

Manager routeHedgePrivate equityPrivate creditInfrastructure

Private fund advisers

Exempt reporting adviser

Reduced filing for private fund and venture capital advisers within the exemption. Files parts of Form ADV without registering, and is not examined in the ordinary course.

Manager routeVenture capitalEmerging managersPrivate equity

Form ADV instructions

Exempt commodity pool operator

A manager running futures or swaps is a commodity pool operator unless it claims an exemption. Most private funds claim one rather than register, and the relief sits in the derivatives regulator's staff letters.

Manager routeHedge

Staff letters

Delaware limited partnership

Where the fund itself is formed. A manager registered here almost always domiciles the vehicle in another state, on the strength of the Court of Chancery and a body of partnership law that investors and their counsel already know. Neither the city on this page nor the federal regulator has any part in it, which is the point worth knowing.

DomicileHedgePrivate equityPrivate creditVenture capital

Delaware limited liability company

Used where a partnership does not suit, most often for general partner entities, management companies and carry vehicles rather than the fund itself.

DomicilePrivate equityVenture capital