On this Ropes & Gray podcast, private equity partners Jim Davis and Matt Richards discuss insurance brokerage M&A transactions—including the recent NFP-Aon transaction that Ropes helped lead—the attractiveness of the insurance brokerage sector for private equity investors, retention tools such as equity rollover and restrictive covenants, diligence issues, regulatory considerations, and more. They provide insights into the market outlook and share their experience on navigating dynamics specific to insurance brokerage transactions.

On this episode of Women @ RopesTalk hosted by IP transactions partner Megan Baca, asset management partner Chelsea Childs interviews Jill Varner, the chief compliance officer at Versus Capital Advisors LLC, a Denver-based asset management firm. Jill shares insights into her role at Versus and the company's focus on real asset investing, primarily through interval funds. She also reflects on her experience as a woman in the male-dominated asset management industry and emphasizes the importance of mentorship and building relationships. The conversation touches on recent regulatory developments impacting the investment management industry and how Jill manages an extensive workload with a small but growing compliance team.

For some, the thought of analyzing data for compliance purposes can be overwhelming, or overly focused on monitoring employees. But what if we approached analytics with curiosity and empathy? On this episode of the Better Way? podcast, co-hosts Zach Coseglia and Hui Chen are joined by Tara Palesh, who leads compliance analytics at Pfizer. With a background in engineering and strategy consulting, Tara views her team’s role as helping compliance colleagues to do their jobs in a better, more focused way. Specifically, she talks about how data analysts can scale up and score data to find and address organizational risk. For companies at the beginning of their data journey, Tara offers thoughts on where to start, as well as the potential of generative AI to transform the compliance space.