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This paper aims to explain how the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, as modified by the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015, changes the way the US Internal Revenue Service will conduct audits of collective investment vehicles treated as partnerships for US tax purposes.

This study explains the entities covered by the new partnership audit regime, the effective dates of the new regime and steps to be taken by funds covered by the new audit regime.

The results show that the new regime creates a liability at the partnership level for any unpaid tax, placing the tax burden on current-year partners.

A fund manager should determine whether the new audit regime is applicable to any of the funds he or she is managing and, if so, amend the fund documents to accommodate the new audit rules, providing a mechanism to elect and supervise a partnership representative, a mechanism to allocate the economic burden of the tax to the appropriate partners and a procedure for selecting the method to calculate the amount of the fund’s tax liability attributable to an audit.

This study provides practical guidance from experienced investment, fund and tax lawyers.

To examine the nine common areas of non-compliance in managing investment funds and discretionary accounts, detailed in a Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) circular dated September 15, 2017, directed at SFC-licensed asset managers.

Discusses a July 2017 circular indicating the SFC’s general concerns and analyzing the following nine common areas of non-compliance cited in the September 15, 2017 circular: (1) inappropriate receipt of cash rebates giving rise to apparent conflicts of interests, (2) failure to follow investment-suitability and discretionary account mandates during solicitation, (3) failure to implement liquidity-risk management processes, (4) deficiencies in governance structures and fair-valuation procedures, (5) deficiencies in systems for ensuring best execution, (6) failure to safeguard fair order allocation, (7) inadequate controls for protection of client assets, (8) inadequate systems to comply with investment restrictions, and (9) inadequate safeguards to address market misconduct risk.

The nine examples of non-compliance provide a useful insight into key “problem areas” indicated to currently be of particular concern to the SFC.

All SFC-licensed asset managers would be well advised to revisit their internal governance structures and operational policies and procedures in order to ensure that they are compliant with applicable standards and requirements.

Practical guidance from a lawyer with extensive experience advising investment managers and advisers, fund administrators, trustees and other fund service providers on investment fund-related issues.

The purpose of this paper is to to summarize Advisers Act registration implications for non‐US advisers that now rely on the “private adviser” exemption from Advisers Act registration and to summarize the principal changes affecting investors in funds managed by non‐US advisers contained in the Dodd‐Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.

The paper explains the elimination of the “private adviser” exemption and the creation of the narrower “foreign private adviser” and other exemptions from Adviser Act registration, reporting and recordkeeping requirements relating to private funds; the Dodd‐Frank Act's provisions for information sharing by the SEC and the confidentiality of private fund information; the “Volcker Rule's” limitation of investment by banking entities and non‐bank financial companies in hedge funds and private equity funds; changes in the definition of “accredited investor”; and the future adjustment of the “qualified client” test for inflation.

The Dodd‐Frank Act will require many investment advisers and fund managers with their principal offices and places of business outside the USA to register with the SEC and to observe, with respect to US clients, the full spectrum of SEC regulations that apply to registered investment advisers. The Act will also impose new disclosure and recordkeeping requirements on many non‐US advisers.

The paper provides expert guidance from experienced financial services lawyers.

Why did inflation fall so dramatically after the establishment of a currency board in Bulgaria in 1997? The establishment of the currency board was the response to a very severe financial crisis where inflation reached hyperinflationary levels. After the currency board was introduced, inflation fell even more spectacularly than it had risen with prices rising less than 10% annually during 1998 and 1999. Was this sudden drop in inflation due to a “discipline” effect caused by a reduction in money growth rates or to a “confidence” effect that created lower inflation expectations thus leading to higher money demand? We find strong indirect evidence for a confidence effect but less support for a discipline effect.

Problem alcohol use (PAU) is common and associated with considerable adverse outcomes among patients receiving opioid agonist treatment (OAT). The purpose of this paper is to describe a qualitative feasibility assessment of a primary care-based complex intervention to promote screening and brief intervention for PAU, which also aims to examine acceptability and potential effectiveness.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 patients and eight general practitioners (GPs) who had been purposively sampled from practices that had participated in the feasibility study. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically.

Six key themes were identified. While all GPs found the intervention informative and feasible, most considered it challenging to incorporate into practice. Barriers included time constraints, and overlooking and underestimating PAU among this cohort of patients. However, the intervention was considered potentially deliverable and acceptable in practice. Patients reported that (in the absence of the intervention) their use of alcohol was rarely discussed with their GP, and were reticent to initiate conversations on their alcohol use for fear of having their methadone dose reduced.

Although a complex intervention to enhance alcohol screening and brief intervention among primary care patients attending for OAT is likely to be feasible and acceptable, time constraints and patients’ reticence to discuss alcohol as well as GPs underestimating patients’ alcohol problems is a barrier to consistent, regular and accurate screening by GPs. Future research by way of a definitive efficacy trial informed by the findings of this study and the Psychosocial INTerventions for Alcohol quantitative data is a priority.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first qualitative study to examine the capability of primary care to address PAU among patients receiving OAT.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that Web 2.0 provides an exciting set of tools for librarians to help their students become more information‐literate.

Recently, information overload and Web 2.0 have led librarians to adopt practices labelled as Library 2.0. Information literacy can be the key to affecting the learning attitudes and characteristics adopted by the users, caricatured as the “Web generation”. Web 2.0 tools provide new, interactive ways to engage them. The literature is reviewed to provide examples of librarians using Web 2.0 tools to improve the information literacy of their users.

Librarians are embracing Web 2.0 as it becomes more mainstream and experimenting with the tools to supplement their information literacy interventions. Many of these are being well received but their quantity and measures of their impact on learning have yet to be assessed.

The link between information literacy and Web 2.0 is novel, encourages constructive learning and enables respected educational methods (e.g. reflection) to be used in different ways.