TOM KOPKO focuses his practice on legal, structural, economic, and strategic issues of special concern to private investment fund managers, sponsors, and their principals and management teams. He represents private equity firms and other private investment fund sponsors in all aspects of their business, in the U.S. and abroad, including in connection with their organization, management, operations, governance, capital raises, internal structuring and compliance, fund formations and operations, portfolio investments, and other strategic transactions. Tom counsels both large, well-known sponsors and emerging managers, and his experience includes advising firms that pursue buyout, energy, growth equity, venture, private credit, infrastructure, secondaries, real estate, special situations, global macro, long/short and other strategies.
Tom regularly provides strategic advice to sponsors throughout the life cycle of a private fund and has advised clients on a broad range of negotiated transactions, such as formation and agreements among principals and employees, seed capital and anchor investor arrangements, joint ventures, co-investments, warehoused investments, placement agent agreements, leveraged products, credit facilities, carried interest plans, spin outs of funds/teams of employees, revenue shares, acquisitions/sales of equity, and other strategic transactions, as well as complex secondary transactions, including fund restructurings, continuation funds, and other GP-led transactions. Tom also represents institutional investors, family offices, and other limited partners in connection with their investments in private funds, and he regularly provides clients with regulatory and compliance advice applicable to the formation, operation, and investment activities of private funds (including SEC and CFTC registration, exemptions, and related 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.”
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.