Adam Tope > DLA Piper LLP (US) > New York, United States > Lawyer Profile

Adam Tope

+1 212-335-4745 adam.tope@dlapiper.com View profile

Work Department

Finance; Corporate; Investment Management and Funds; Financial Services; Energy and Natural Resources; Real Estate; Technology

Position

Partner

Career

Adam Tope provides leading secondaries firms, investment fund sponsors, and investors with creative, commercial and realistic advice relating to fund formation and GP-led transactions. He brings a global perspective to his clients, having represented managers and investors in dozens of jurisdictions.

Adam’s secondaries practice is primarily focused on representing lead investors in connection with GP-led transactions such as continuation funds, tender offers and other complex secondary transactions. He also specializes in representing spin out teams in GP-led spin out transactions, particularly in the energy and venture capital space. Adam has completely over 100 secondaries transactions in his career and has developed class-leading efficient processes to manage tender offers and pooled sale/purchase transactions for leading secondaries investors, endowments and sovereign wealth funds.

Adam’s sponsor-side clients regularly include prominent private equity and hedge fund managers, real estate managers, and venture capital sponsors. He advises these clients with entity formation, introductions to service providers, discussions with placement agents, drafting of offering memorandums, negotiations with investors and Investment Advisers Act and Investment Company Act compliance, as well as guidance on ongoing operational funds. Adam also draws on his experience as a former computer programmer to advise fund managers forming cryptofunds. Adam has a particular niche representing first time managers and spin outs – handling every aspect of the spin out including employment and track record issues with the prior firm, setting up management companies and assisting in fundraising and formation of first-time funds. Adam has worked with spin outs from Apollo, Carlyle, Riverstone, Summit Partners and others. Adam also regularly represents fund principals with respect to the negotiation of their employment arrangements with funds. He has a deep understanding of how principal compensation is structured and can guide principals with the negotiation of vesting arrangements, key person/for cause removal rights, and rights to carried interest/promote.

Adam lastly has a prominent practice of investor-side clients including family offices, funds of funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds and royal families. He has represented these investors in hundreds of transactions in nearly every jurisdiction and in nearly every type of fund. These transactions include investments into private equity funds, hedge funds, venture capital funds, funds of funds, SBIC funds and hybrid funds. This work also includes representing investors in complicated secondary transactions, managed accounts, co-investments, funds of ones, joint ventures and other bespoke alternatives transactions.

Outside of the investment funds universe, Adam is a former serial entrepreneur, having served as the president and CEO of a technology incubator that was ranked as one of the 500 largest online companies – giving him an entrepreneurial perspective useful to first time funds, startups and venture-backed organizations.

Education

J.D., Georgetown University Law Center; B.S., Cornell University