THOMAS KOPKO focuses his practice on legal, structural, economic, and strategic issues of special concern to private investment fund managers, sponsors, and their principals. He represents a wide range of investment advisory firms, fund sponsors, institutional investors, and other asset managers in a variety of formation, transaction, and regulatory matters. He regularly advises clients in securities, derivatives, and futures-related corporate and regulatory matters arising in connection with the structure, formation, and ongoing operational needs of alternative investment products that span the liquidity spectrum, including domestic and offshore private equity funds, hedge funds, venture capital funds, hybrid funds, single relationship/investor funds, managed accounts, feeder-fund and managed account platforms, and funds of funds. He often advises asset managers on portfolio company investments, co-investments, side pockets, joint ventures, leveraged products, credit facilities, placement agent agreements, and other strategic transactions such as life cycle events, including formation and agreements among principals and employees, seeding capital, spin outs of funds/teams of employees, revenue shares, and acquisitions/sales of equity. Tom also advises clients with respect to family office investment-related and regulatory matters, including family office formation, SEC and CFTC registration, exemptions and related regulatory guidance, and best practices.
Tom is a member of Sidley’s Investment Funds practice group, one of the premier private fund practices in the world. The team consistently wins top awards across all aspects of the private fund industry and was named “Law Firm of the Year” for Private Funds/Hedge Funds Law in the 2022 and 2021 editions of U.S. News – Best Lawyers “Best Law Firms.” Chambers USA has awarded the team top band rankings in Hedge Funds every year since 2008.
Tom received his B.A. from the University of Notre Dame, where he was a four-year member of the varsity men’s basketball team and recipient of the “Francis Patrick O’Connor Award,” one of the University’s three major athletic awards. Tom received his J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell International Law Journal and recipient of the Peter Belfer Memorial Prize, which is awarded annually to the student who demonstrates the greatest proficiency and insight in federal securities regulation and related laws.
Prior to law school, Tom spent two years working for a small business consulting firm based out of the United States Virgin Islands. Prior to joining Sidley, Tom was a Public Interest Law Initiative (PILI) graduate fellow at the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law.