Morrison C. Warren

Morrison Warren is the co-chair of Chapman’s Investment Management Practice Group. Morrison has extensive experience advising registered investment companies and their boards of directors, registered investment advisers, hedge funds, index providers, and broker-dealers on a variety of matters pertaining to the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, and other securities laws. In addition, he has represented publicly held companies with respect to their compliance with stock exchange requirements and federal securities laws.

Morrison is perhaps best known for his representation of registered investment companies, including exchange-traded funds (ETFs), mutual funds, closed-end funds, and unit investment trusts. Morrison is one of the leading legal ETF practitioners and now serves as fund counsel to over 525 ETFs. His ETF clients include a wide range of asset managers, from startups to large, established firms. Through his representation of these clients, he has helped bring to market some of the most notable products in recent years, including the first 1940 Act commodity ETF, the first blockchain ETF, the first "defined outcome" ETFs, the first levered and inverse single-stock ETFs, one of the first bitcoin futures ETFs, three of the first spot bitcoin ETFs, and two of the first spot ether ETFs.

He also has extensive experience representing closed-end funds and mutual funds. The group he helps oversee at Chapman serves as fund counsel to over 200 mutual funds and closed-end funds. He regularly advises closed-end funds and their advisers on initial public offerings and follow-on rights offerings. Morrison also oversaw one of the first instances of an interval fund publicly listing its shares on a national securities exchange. Additionally, he has over 30 years of experience representing unit investment trusts and is part of a Chapman team that regularly serves as fund counsel for the initial offering of approximately 200 unit trusts annually. In total, Chapman’s Investment Management Practice Group serves as fund counsel to over $350 billion in registered investment company assets under management and is responsible for the filing of over 1,500 registration statements annually.

In recent years, Morrison has also been at the vanguard of the emerging blockchain and digital asset industry. He represents clients seeking to offer physically-backed bitcoin ETFs, ETFs principally investing in bitcoin futures contracts, and other issues relating to funds which invest in cryptocurrency in securities offerings. He also represents privately equity funds and private trusts that offer exposure to various cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Polkadot (DOT), Avalanche (AVA), Tron (TRX), and Algorand (ALGO), among others.

Notable Engagements