Thomas A. Hickey focuses his practice on fund formation and investment management. He is a member of the firm’s Fund Formation & Investment Management Practice, where he advises clients on the structuring, formation and ongoing management of various private investment funds, including venture capital, private equity, fixed income and various hedge structures and their respective management companies. His entire practice is devoted to these clients.

In addition, Thomas and the team represent a wide variety of institutional investors, especially public employee pension plans, ERISA plans and endowment plans. Key to this advice is Thomas’ 44 plus years of experience with these investors and his knowledge of each investor’s statutory obligations, ordinances and specific policies.

Thomas is well versed in a variety of issues faced by plans relating to gift and ethics requirements, conflict-of-interest rules and regulations and “pay-to-play” regulations affecting the investment management industry. Throughout his career, he has litigated cases involving fiduciary responsibilities, administrative law issues and investment transactions.

Speaking Engagements and Training Sessions for Clients

While in law school and continuing to the present day, Thomas has spoken at over one hundred conferences, both domestically and internationally. The speeches have covered a wide variety of issues such as institutional investor due diligence, the impact of federal legislation, SEC, FINRA and AIFM issues, and key points for onshore and offshore asset managers when seeking commitments from institutional investors and fiduciary responsibilities for pension plan trustees and staff. Over the past four decades, he has devoted considerable time conducting regular training sessions for his private fund and institutional investor clients especially in the areas of fiduciary responsibility, compliance and emerging industry trends.

Since 2016 Thomas has been a Guest Lecturer at Harvard Law School. In 2020, he was asked to assume the position of Guest Lecturer in Residence, co-teaching the course entitled “Hedge Funds & Private Equity: Law and Policy”. He also speaks up to six times a year, most recently at the State Association of County Retirement Systems (California), California Association of Public Retirement Systems and conference industry conferences in Grand Cayman, Amsterdam and Sao Paolo. Additionally, Thomas was recently selected to be a member of the editorial board for The Journal of Securities Operation and Custody (London-based Henry Stewart Publications LLP).