Articles Tagged with BEA

Published on:

By

U.S. Investment advisers, other financial services providers, and pooled investment vehicles – private and public funds – involved in certain cross-border transactions must file.

Background

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (“BEA”) is conducting its next five-year “Benchmark Survey of U.S. Financial Services Providers and Foreign Persons” on Form BE-180. The survey is mandatory and collects data on cross-border trade and financial services transactions of U.S. financial services providers, including investment advisers and other asset managers, broker-dealers and banks. BE-180 covers cross-border purchase and sales transactions that occurred or were charged during the U.S. reporter’s 2014 fiscal year. BE-180 is one of a series of benchmark surveys[1] measuring international trade transactions and collecting data for use in various economic studies.

Who Is Required to Report

Each U.S. individual and entity that is a “financial services provider” and meets the reporting requirements must file form BE-180. Financial services providers include investment advisers and their pooled vehicles such as hedge funds, private equity funds, pension funds, mutual funds and real estate funds, and broker-dealers.[2]

Filing Thresholds

The reporting requirement applies to each U.S. individual or entity that is a financial services provider with (i) either[3] sales or purchases directly with non-U.S. individuals or entities in excess of $3 million or more on a consolidated basis during the 2014 fiscal year, or (ii) sales or purchases directly with non-U.S. individuals or entities of less than $3 million, that were notified by the BEA about the survey. Any U.S. individual or entity that is notified by the BEA about the survey but has no transactions of the types of services covered must complete pages 1-3 of the survey.

Reportable Transactions

Reportable financial transactions include investment management and advisory services, brokerage services, underwriting, custodial services, credit-related services, securities lending, and electronic funds transfer services – transactions involving cross-border payments, such as advisory or sub-advisory fees, brokerage commissions, custodial fees and securities lending fees.

Reportable data include the transactional counterparty’s location by country and the relationship between the U.S. reporter and its counterparty (i.e., foreign affiliates or unaffiliated foreign persons). You may have easy access to some of the required data (such as through your administrator or internal accounting systems). However, as with the other BE forms, obtaining some of the required information may involve additional legwork and cooperation with cross-border counterparties, which should be considered in meeting the deadlines.

Filing Deadline and Extensions

The BEA has granted automatic extensions to the original October 1 filing deadline, as follows:

File no later than November 1, 2015 if:

  • You were notified of the BE-180 survey by BEA and have a BE-180 identification number below 140012490.
  • You were NOT notified of the BE-180 survey by BEA and do NOT have a BE-180 identification number.

File no later than December 1, 2015 if:

  • You were notified of the BE-180 survey by BEA and have a BE-180 identification number above 140012490.

Additional extensions to each filing deadline will be granted by the BEA if a request is submitted by November 1, 2015 as instructed by the BEA.

Penalties

Failure to file a required report can lead to civil and criminal penalties.

Confidential Treatment

Like it is the case with the other BE forms, information reported on BE-180 is confidential and may be used for only analytical or statistical purposes.

Sources

Form BE-180 is available online here.

Instructions for new filers are available here.

Form instructions are available here.

FAQs regarding the BE-180 benchmark survey are available here.

___________________

[1] See our alerts and articles on other BEA survey forms here.

[2] Additional entities included in the definition are commercial banking entities, bank holding companies, financial holding companies, savings institutions, check cashing and debit card issuing entities, underwriters, investment bankers, providers of securities custody services, insurance carriers, insurance agents, insurance brokers, and insurance services providers.

[3] The $3 million threshold applies to purchases and sales separately, and must be reported on separate schedules to the BE-180. Consequently, a U.S. reporter, for example, that only exceeds the threshold for sales but does not reach the threshold for purchases, is only required to complete the schedule relating to sales.

Published on:

By

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has extended the deadline to file Form BE-10, Benchmark Survey of U.S. Direct Investment Abroad, to June 30, 2015, for all new filers.

For information on Form BE-10 filing, please read our recent article HERE.

Further information on BE-10 is available at the BEA website.

 

Published on:

By
  • Mandatory reporting required by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Form BE-10 – 2014 Benchmark Survey of U.S. Direct Investment Abroad
  • Investment managers, general partners, hedge funds and private equity funds are among those that may have to file

What is BE-10?

BE-10 is a benchmark survey of U.S. direct investment abroad, conducted once every five years by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (“BEA”) of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The purpose of the survey is to obtain economic data on the operations of U.S. parent companies and their foreign affiliates. The BE-10 survey is conducted pursuant to the International Investment and Trade in Services Survey Act, and the filing of reports is mandatory pursuant to Section 5(b)(2) of that Act. BE-10 reports are kept confidential and used for statistical analysis.

What is the filing deadline?

May 29, 2015 – if you are a U.S. Reporter (defined below) filing to report fewer than 50 Foreign Affiliates (defined below).

June 30, 2015 – if you are a U.S. Reporter filing to report 50 or more Foreign Affiliates.

Extensions. The BEA will consider reasonable requests for extensions if received before the applicable due date of the report. Extension requests should “enumerate the substantive reasons necessitating the extension” on the form provided by the BEA.

Who must file?

All U.S. persons that had direct or indirect ownership or control (each, a “U.S. Reporter”) of at least 10%[i] of the voting stock of a foreign business enterprise (a “Foreign Affiliate”) at any time during the entity’s 2014 fiscal year must file.

Any U.S. general partner or investment manager of a private fund could be a U.S. Reporter, and any hedge fund, private equity fund, or other private fund could be either a U.S. Reporter or a Foreign Affiliate, if they meet the above criteria.

READ MORE…

____________________

[i] A U.S. Reporter’s ownership interest in a Foreign Affiliate may be held indirectly through a directly held Foreign Affiliate that owned the given foreign enterprise. You must “look through” all intervening foreign enterprises in the chain to determine whether you hold a foreign business enterprise to the extent of 10% or more. To calculate your ultimate ownership percentage, multiply the direct ownership percentage in the first Foreign Affiliate by that first Foreign Affiliate’s direct ownership percentage in the second enterprise in the chain, multiplied by the direct ownership percentage for all other intervening enterprises in the ownership chain, until you reach the ownership percentage in the final foreign business enterprise. To illustrate, if a U.S. Reporter owned 50% of Foreign Affiliate A directly, and A owned 75% of foreign business enterprise B which, in turn, owned 80% of foreign business enterprise C, the U.S. Reporter’s percentage of indirect ownership of B would be 37.5% (the product of the first two percentages), its indirect ownership of C would be 30% (the product of all three percentages), and B and C (as well as A) would be considered Foreign Affiliates of the U.S. Reporter.

Read this article and additional publications at pillsburylaw.com/publications-and-presentations.