Profile: Lynn M McGrade

Private funds

Biography: Private funds

Lynn McGrade is a senior partner with Borden Ladner Gervais LLP where she is the Toronto regional co-ordinator of Borden Ladner Gervais' investment management practice group and is an active member of the firm's capital markets practice group. Her practice focuses on investment management law specialising in investment funds, investment management, alternative asset management and securities law. She advises both Canadian and international investment advisers and dealers on ongoing legal issues relating to investment management in Canada. She has advised and assisted with various exempt offerings of pooled funds, hedge funds, private equity funds and other alternative investment products. These offerings have included multi-managed funds of foreign-based hedge funds; open-end Canadian hedge funds, including both trust and limited partnership structures; and various closed-end investment funds and the public offering and listing of their securities. She also advises investment dealers in Canada in connection with distribution, registration and compliance issues relating to the offering of hedge funds in Canada.

Ms McGrade is the former chair of the Investment Companies and Mutual Funds Committee (Committee I) of the International Bar Association and was a member of the Ontario Securities Commission Advisory Committee on Fund Governance. She was seconded to the Investment Funds Committee of Canada (IFIC) and is a past and present member of industry committees including the IFIC Education Committee, IFIC Regulatory Steering Committee and IFIC Sales Practices Committee. She frequently speaks at industry seminars on investment fund and other securities law topics. She co-authored 'Keeping Current with Your Compliance Obligations', in The Capital Guide to Starting a Hedge Fund - A Canadian Perspective, (Toronto: ISI Publications Limited, 2005).

Ms McGrade was called to the Ontario Bar in 1990. She was recognised by L'expert Magazine as one of the 40 most innovative corporate lawyers to watch in Canada (2006), as one of the top 15 women lawyers to watch in Canada (2003) and as one of Canada's top 40 lawyers under the age of 40 (2002).