Form 40-6B Files Dataset

The Form 40-6B Files Dataset is a comprehensive collection of EDGAR submissions of Form 40-6B applications and Form 40-6B/A amendments — the application format under which an "employees' securities company" (ESC) requests an order from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, under Section 6(b) of the Investment Company Act of 1940, exempting the company from all or specified provisions of the Act. Each record in the dataset corresponds to a single EDGAR submission identified by accession number, packaged as a self-contained accession folder inside a monthly ZIP container along with a structured metadata.json sidecar and the HTML application document. The applicants are typically a sponsoring employer (often a large investment bank, alternative asset manager, hedge fund complex, private equity or venture capital firm, or major law firm), the ESC entity itself, and affiliated co-applicants such as the general partner, investment adviser, or feeder vehicles. Coverage begins in May 2002, reflecting the migration of Form 40-6B onto EDGAR, and the dataset extends forward through the latest monthly refresh.

Dataset APIs

Dataset Files

What This Dataset Contains

The dataset captures the universe of Form 40-6B and 40-6B/A submissions on EDGAR, packaged for systematic precedent and corpus work. Form 40-6B is filed under Section 6(b) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 by investment vehicles whose outstanding securities are beneficially owned exclusively by current or former employees of a single employer (or affiliated employers) and their immediate family members, as defined in Section 2(a)(13) of the Act. The applicant requests exemptive relief on the rationale that a captive, employee-only ownership base mitigates the investor-protection concerns the Act addresses. Form 40-6B/A is the amendment vehicle for the application itself — used to update, supplement, or correct the original application as it works through the Division of Investment Management's review process. Both variants live side-by-side in the dataset.

The filing is fundamentally a legal application document, not a periodic disclosure or financial report. Its tone is narrative and argumentative: it cites statutory provisions, prior Commission orders, and applicant-specific facts to justify the requested exemptive relief. No structured financial-statement data is part of the application package, and there is no XBRL or iXBRL component for this form type. Coverage begins May 2002, which reflects the EDGAR electronic-filing horizon for Form 40-6B rather than any change in the form itself; pre-EDGAR applications and orders exist in the Commission's historical paper files and published Release stream but are not part of this digital dataset. The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers under the path pattern YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip, with each container holding the filings accepted by EDGAR within that calendar month.

Content Structure of a Single Record

What one record is

One record in the Form 40-6B Files Dataset is a single EDGAR submission of either a Form 40-6B application or a Form 40-6B/A amendment, captured as a self-contained accession folder inside a monthly ZIP container. Within a container, the path is YYYY-MM/<18-digit-accession>/, where the dash-stripped 18-digit folder name (e.g., 000110465925019219) is the EDGAR accession number with hyphens removed and corresponds one-to-one with the dashed accession 0001104659-25-019219. Each accession folder bundles two layers of content: a structured metadata.json sidecar describing the submission, and the document files that make up the EDGAR submission itself — in practice the HTML body of the application.

The unit of observation is the filing — not the applicant, not the calendar month, and not the document. A record is uniquely keyed by accession number across the entire dataset.

The form variant (40-6B for an original application versus 40-6B/A for an amendment) is not encoded in the directory layout. Both variants share the same folder schema and live side-by-side under the same YYYY-MM/ parent. The only authoritative indicator of variant is the formType field inside metadata.json.

Two-layer content structure

A record is organized into two stacked layers inside the accession folder:

1. A structured metadata layer (metadata.json) that describes the EDGAR submission as captured by EDGAR's filing-header system: form type, accession number, filing timestamp, filer entities, and the document manifest with size, sequence, type, description, and direct URL for every constituent document.
2. A document layer consisting of the actual filing content as it lives on EDGAR. For Form 40-6B, this is in practice a single HTML document — the application text — preserved exactly as submitted, including its EDGAR SGML per-document header wrapper.

Other artifacts that EDGAR catalogs in the manifest — cover-page graphics and the bundled complete-submission .txt file — are referenced by URL inside metadata.json but are not shipped inside the ZIP. Image files are stripped from the dataset by policy, and the consolidated submission .txt is similarly not duplicated into the archive. The record is therefore a thin, file-faithful mirror of the EDGAR submission narrowed to its non-image documents, plus a structured metadata sidecar that preserves the full EDGAR document index even for items that are not bundled.

The metadata.json structure

metadata.json is the canonical structured representation of one submission. It is small (typically under 2 KB), JSON-encoded, and present exactly once in every accession folder. Top-level fields:

• formType — string, either "40-6B" or "40-6B/A". The only place the original-vs-amendment distinction is recorded.
• accessionNo — string, the dashed EDGAR accession number NNNNNNNNNN-YY-NNNNNN.
• description — string, the human-readable form description ("Form 40-6B - Application for exemption from all provisions of The Investment Company Act of 1940 by an Employee's Investment Company").
• filedAt — string, ISO 8601 timestamp with offset (e.g., "2025-02-28T16:57:53-05:00") capturing EDGAR's acceptance datetime, including the time-of-day component, not just the wall-clock filing date.
• linkToFilingDetails — string URL pointing at the primary filing document on sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/....
• linkToHtml — string URL of the EDGAR submission index page (...-index.htm).
• linkToTxt — string URL of the consolidated SGML submission text file that EDGAR produces for the accession.
• linkToXbrl — string URL for an XBRL instance; consistently empty for Form 40-6B.
• id — string, a 32-character internal identifier for the record.
• documentFormatFiles — array of objects, the per-document manifest (see below).
• dataFiles — array, EDGAR's data-file manifest (XBRL/XML/etc.); empty for this form type.
• seriesAndClassesContractsInformation — array, investment-company series/class metadata; empty for 40-6B applicants because they have no registered series at the application stage.
• entities — array of objects, the filer-identity manifest (see below).

Numeric-looking values inside the JSON (size, cik, fileNo, irsNo, filmNo, fiscalYearEnd, act) are stored as strings, preserving zero-padding and the EDGAR-native textual representation.

documentFormatFiles[]

Each item in this array is one document that EDGAR catalogued as part of the submission. Per-item fields:

• sequence — string sequence number from the EDGAR header ("1", "2", "3", ...). The bundled complete-submission text file uses " " (a single space) instead of a number.
• type — EDGAR document type code ("40-6B" for the application body, "GRAPHIC" for image attachments, " " for the consolidated submission text file).
• description — free-form description from the EDGAR header (e.g., "40-6B", "GRAPHIC", "Complete submission text file").
• documentUrl — direct URL to the document on EDGAR.
• size — string with the file size in bytes.

A representative 40-6B submission carries three entries: the HTML application (sequence 1, type 40-6B), one or more JPEG cover graphics (typed GRAPHIC), and the bundled SGML .txt (no sequence, type " "). Of these, only the HTML application is materialized inside the ZIP; the GRAPHIC and the bundled .txt exist in the manifest as URL references and must be fetched directly from EDGAR if needed.

entities[]

Each item describes one filing entity associated with the submission. Fields (all stored as strings):

• companyName — entity name with the EDGAR role suffix in parentheses, e.g., "DPP Investors 2025, LP (Filer)".
• cik — Central Index Key.
• fileNo — SEC file number assigned to the application; for 40-6B these carry the 813- prefix, the standard Investment Company Act file-number series for exemptive applications.
• irsNo — IRS employer identification number.
• stateOfIncorporation — two-letter state code.
• fiscalYearEnd — four-digit MMDD (e.g., "1231" = December 31).
• act — encoded statute under which the filing is made; "98" denotes the Investment Company Act of 1940 in EDGAR's encoding.
• type — the entity's relationship type code, typically the form code itself ("40-6B").
• filmNo — SEC film number assigned to the submission.

A 40-6B application is often filed jointly by the employees' securities company and one or more co-applicants — typically the sponsoring employer, an affiliated investment adviser or general partner, or outside counsel acting in a co-applicant capacity. When EDGAR records multiple filers for the submission, each appears as a separate object in entities[]. Where co-applicants are named only in the body of the application but are not registered as EDGAR filers for the submission, they will appear in the document text but not as entities[] rows.

The filing document

The application document is delivered as an .htm file, but it is not standalone HTML. Each document is wrapped in EDGAR's SGML per-document header, exactly as it sits inside EDGAR's full submission:

          1
          <DOCUMENT>
        

          2
          <TYPE>40-6B
        

          3
          <SEQUENCE>1
        

          4
          <FILENAME>tm257836d1_406b.htm
        

          5
          <DESCRIPTION>40-6B
        

          6
          <TEXT>
        

          7
          <HTML>
        

          8
          <HEAD> ... </HEAD>
        

          9
          <BODY ...> ... full HTML body of the application ... </BODY>
        

          10
          </HTML>
        

          11
          </TEXT>
        

          12
          </DOCUMENT>
        

The header tags (<DOCUMENT>, <TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, <FILENAME>, <DESCRIPTION>, <TEXT>) are bare, unclosed tags that sit above the <HTML> root. Closing </TEXT> and </DOCUMENT> tags appear after </HTML>. Any HTML parser intended to consume the body must either tolerate this preamble or strip it before parsing.

The HTML body itself contains the full Application for Order of Exemption. Although structure varies by applicant and counsel, a 40-6B body is typically organized as:

• A cover page declaring the total page count ("This Application consists of N pages."), the filing date, a placeholder File No. line (assigned by SEC staff after acceptance), and the names of co-applicants.
• A caption block citing the relevant Investment Company Act sections — usually Section 6(b), often together with related provisions such as Section 6(e) — under which the exemption is sought.
• A notice/communications block with the contact attorney's name, mailing address, telephone, and email at the law firm representing the applicants.
• Identification of the applicants: the employees' securities company itself and any co-applicants (typically the sponsoring employer, an affiliated entity such as the investment adviser or general partner, or outside counsel acting in a co-applicant capacity).
• A factual description of the employer or affiliated employer group, including its business, structure, and relationship to the applicants.
• A description of the employees' securities company itself: legal form, jurisdiction of organization, capital structure, governance, investment objectives, and operational mechanics.
• A description of the eligible participants — the classes of current and former employees, and the categories of immediate family members — who may beneficially own the company's securities.
• A statement of the specific exemptive relief requested, identifying each provision of the 1940 Act from which exemption is sought and articulating the legal basis, including citations to prior Commission orders relied on as precedent.
• Conditions the applicants are willing to accept, representations to the Commission, signature blocks for each applicant, and a verification.

The document is generally formatted with inline CSS (e.g., STYLE="font: 10pt Times New Roman, Times, Serif; ...") and frequently carries layout artifacts from the document-preparation tool used by counsel — for instance, Gofiler-style HTML comments such as <!-- Field: Rule-Page --> and <!-- Field: /Page --> that demarcate paginated print regions. These are visual-fidelity artifacts and carry no semantic content.

What the dataset includes and excludes

For each accession, the dataset packages:

• The structured metadata.json sidecar containing the form type, accession number, filing timestamp, EDGAR-side index/text/filing-detail URLs, the full document manifest (including entries for documents not shipped inside the ZIP), and one row per filer entity.
• The non-image documents of the submission as they exist on EDGAR, retaining EDGAR's original filenames (e.g., tm257836d1_406b.htm) and EDGAR's SGML per-document header wrapper. For Form 40-6B this is essentially always a single HTML application document.

The following are referenced in metadata.json -> documentFormatFiles[] but not materialized inside the ZIP:

• GRAPHIC-type attachments (JPEG, GIF, and similar image files), including cover-page logos and any embedded graphics. These are stripped from the archive by dataset policy and must be fetched from documentUrl if needed.
• The consolidated complete-submission .txt file that EDGAR generates for every accession. It is referenced via the top-level linkToTxt and as a documentFormatFiles entry but is not duplicated into the archive.
• The EDGAR submission index page (...-index.htm) is similarly available only via the linkToHtml URL.

The directory layout is flat: a container's archive root contains a single YYYY-MM/ folder; under it is one accession folder per filing. There is no nesting by CIK, by filer, or by form variant. The form-variant distinction (40-6B vs 40-6B/A) is captured exclusively in metadata.json -> formType.

Interpretation and extraction notes

Several details matter for correctly reading a record:

• The formType field is the only reliable signal of original-vs-amendment status; the directory and filename do not encode it.
• The HTML application document is SGML-wrapped. Strip the leading bare tags (<DOCUMENT>, <TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, <FILENAME>, <DESCRIPTION>, <TEXT>) and the trailing </TEXT></DOCUMENT> before feeding the body to an HTML parser that does not tolerate document-level SGML preamble.
• documentFormatFiles[] is a complete index of the EDGAR submission, not a manifest of what is inside the ZIP. Consumers should reconcile the manifest against the on-disk files: image entries and the .txt complete-submission entry will be in the manifest but not on disk, by design.
• All numeric-looking fields in metadata.json are strings; do not assume integer types for size, cik, fileNo, irsNo, filmNo, fiscalYearEnd, or act when parsing.
• Joint applications are common. When more than one filer is registered with EDGAR for the submission, entities[] will hold multiple objects; when co-applicants are named only in the application body (e.g., outside counsel co-filing on behalf of a fund), they may appear in the HTML text but not as separate entities[] rows. Identifying every co-applicant therefore typically requires reading the document body in addition to the metadata.
• The SEC file number (fileNo in entities[], 813-NNNNNN) is the durable cross-record key that links a 40-6B application to its 40-6B/A amendments and ultimately to any exemptive order issued by the Commission. Accession numbers are unique per submission and do not chain amendments to originals on their own.
• Form 40-6B is a niche application form with low filing volume. Year-over-year and applicant-level analysis benefits from aggregating across the entire dataset rather than relying on within-month density, and from joining records on file number rather than accession when reconstructing the lifecycle of a single application.

Who Files or Publishes This Dataset, and When

Each record is a single Form 40-6B application or Form 40-6B/A amendment submitted to EDGAR by an employees' securities company (ESC) — typically alongside joint applicants — seeking an exemptive order from the SEC under Section 6(b) of the Investment Company Act of 1940. It is not a periodic report and not a transactional disclosure. It is a discretionary application required because the applicants cannot lawfully operate the vehicle as a registered investment company on standard terms.

Employees' securities companies and joint applicants

The legal filer is an employees' securities company as defined in Section 2(a)(13) of the Investment Company Act — an investment company whose outstanding securities (other than short-term paper) are held exclusively by current or former employees, directors, persons on retainer, qualifying consultants, immediate family members of the foregoing, or the employer and its affiliates. In practice, an ESC is a private pooled vehicle (commonly a limited partnership or LLC) sponsored by an employer to let personnel co-invest with the firm.

Section 6(b) applications are almost always filed jointly. Co-applicants typically include:

• the prospective ESC entity (usually the named EDGAR registrant)
• the sponsoring employer or parent firm
• the general partner, managing member, or investment adviser of the ESC
• affiliated funds or feeder vehicles that the ESC will invest in or alongside
• in some structures, employee feeders, family vehicles, or trusts

Sponsor archetypes in this population are concentrated among large financial and professional services firms with established employee co-investment programs: major investment banks, alternative asset managers, hedge fund complexes, private equity and venture capital firms, and large law firms. Smaller employers rarely file because the legal cost of a Section 6(b) application is high relative to a modest co-investment program.

The filer should not be confused with the eligible investors described inside the application. Employees, directors, and family members are the contemplated beneficial owners; they have no individual filing obligation.

Statutory framework: Section 6(b)

Section 6(b) authorizes the Commission, by order upon application, to exempt an ESC from provisions of the 1940 Act to the extent consistent with investor protection. Form 40-6B is the prescribed application format. Because ESCs are investment companies under Section 3, they would otherwise be subject to the full registration regime (Sections 7, 8, 17, 18, 23); the Section 6(b) order replaces that with tailored conditions calibrated to the closed, employee-only investor base.

Relief commonly addresses affiliated transactions, co-investment with the sponsor's other funds, performance-based compensation, leverage outside Section 18 limits, multiple classes of interests, and operation without registration under Section 8.

Form 40-6B/A is the amendment vehicle for the application itself — used to respond to staff comments, update applicant information, add or remove co-applicants, expand relief, or modify conditions.

Triggering events

There is no recurring or calendar-based cadence. Filings are application-driven, triggered by:

• formation and launch of a new ESC by a sponsoring employer
• material restructuring of an existing employee co-investment program that falls outside an existing order, prompting a fresh 40-6B or a 40-6B/A
• staff comments during review of a pending application, generating 40-6B/A amendments before the order is issued
• material changes to a previously granted order (new participant classes, new affiliated funds, modified leverage terms, sponsor reorganization)
• successor filings when the sponsor is acquired, reorganized, or rebranded and the order must be reissued under new applicants

The natural filing trigger is the planned launch of the ESC; applicants typically file months in advance to allow staff review.

Regulatory review

Applications are reviewed by the SEC's Division of Investment Management, principally through its Chief Counsel's Office, which handles exemptive applications under the 1940 Act. Review is a substantive negotiation: staff comment, applicants respond through correspondence and one or more 40-6B/A amendments, and the parties converge on an agreed condition set.

When the Commission is prepared to act, it issues a notice of the application via an Investment Company Act Release, providing an opportunity for hearing. Absent a hearing request, the Commission issues an order granting the exemption, also published as a Release. The order — not the Form 40-6B — authorizes the ESC to operate. EDGAR records are the application-side artifacts; the corresponding orders live in the Commission's release stream, cross-referenced by file number.

Timing characteristics

• no statutory due date; filed when the sponsor decides to seek relief, typically months before intended launch
• elapsed time from initial 40-6B to final order ranges from several months to over a year, depending on novelty and staff workload
• 40-6B/A amendments cluster around staff comment cycles, so one matter often yields one initial 40-6B and several 40-6B/A filings
• no annual renewal; once granted, the order governs the ESC indefinitely, subject to its conditions
• only changes outside the scope of an existing order generate new filings; routine operation does not

Distinctions and edge cases

• Registered investment companies file on Forms N-1A, N-2, N-8B-2, N-CSR, N-PORT, etc. ESCs sit outside that regime by virtue of the Section 6(b) order.
• Private funds relying on Section 3(c)(1) or 3(c)(7) avoid investment company status entirely and do not file Form 40-6B. ESCs choose the Section 6(b) route because their employee-only investor base often cannot satisfy qualified-purchaser or accredited-investor tests across all participants (e.g., family members, non-accredited employees).
• Business development companies and registered closed-end funds file under different 1940 Act provisions and do not use Form 40-6B.
• The legal filer is the applicant entity (and joint applicants), not the underlying employee-investors.
• Form 40-6B/A is strictly an application amendment, not an ongoing reporting amendment. There is no annual update on this form.
• Sponsors with multiple ESCs (e.g., separate vehicles per vintage or strategy) may file separate applications, though applicants frequently request relief broad enough to cover a family of present and future ESCs.

Earliest records

The ESC exemption regime dates to the original 1940 Act; Section 2(a)(13) and Section 6(b) have been in effect since enactment, and Section 6(b) orders have been issued for decades in paper form. EDGAR-based filing of Form 40-6B begins in the early 2000s. The earliest records in this dataset are from May 2002, reflecting migration onto EDGAR rather than the inception of the underlying obligation. Pre-EDGAR applications and orders exist in the Commission's historical paper files and published Release stream but are not part of this digital dataset.

How This Dataset Differs From Similar Datasets or Filings

Form 40-6B occupies a narrow corner of the Investment Company Act of 1940: applications for exemptive orders filed by employees' securities companies (ESCs) under Section 6(b). Three distinctions separate it from every nearby dataset:

• Narrow scoping to one statutory hook (Section 6(b)) and one applicant type (ESCs as defined in Section 2(a)(13)).
• Affirmative-order regime rather than reliance on a statutory exclusion — the filing requests permission, it does not claim a self-executing exemption.
• Application artifact, not the Commission's responsive notice or order.

The comparisons below are organized around datasets researchers most often confuse with this one.

Form 40-APP and 40-APP/A — general 1940 Act exemptive applications

The nearest cousin. Form 40-APP is the catch-all application for exemptive, no-action, or interpretive relief under the 1940 Act outside the Section 6(b) ESC route. Cadence, document structure, amendment handling (40-APP/A vs. 40-6B/A), and the notice-and-order workflow are nearly identical. The split is statutory hook and applicant population: 40-APP serves a broad universe (registered funds seeking affiliated-transaction relief, fund-of-funds, pre-Rule 6c-11 ETF relief, multi-class share relief), while 40-6B is restricted to ESCs invoking Section 6(b). Studying ESCs through 40-APP misses the population entirely; studying exemptive practice broadly through 40-6B captures only a sliver.

Form 40-OIP — Commission notice/order outputs

Form 40-OIP and the surrounding Investment Company Act release filings are the Commission-side response to an exemptive application: the notice of application soliciting public comment, then the order granting or denying relief. Form 40-6B is the input artifact authored by the applicant; 40-OIP is the regulatory product authored by SEC staff. They are paired conceptually but produced by different parties at different stages and live in different EDGAR submission types. Outcome status, imposed conditions, and SEC reasoning sit in 40-OIP and the releases — not in this dataset.

Form N-1A and Form N-2 — registered fund registration statements

N-1A (open-end funds, most ETFs) and N-2 (closed-end funds, BDCs) sit on the opposite side of the registration question. They register an investment company that intends to operate as a regulated public fund subject to the full Act; Form 40-6B requests an order exempting an ESC from substantial portions of the Act so it need not operate that way. Audience and form differ accordingly: N-1A and N-2 produce retail-facing prospectuses, SAIs, and standardized financial schedules; a 40-6B application is a staff-facing legal narrative describing the employer, eligible employee population, and specific exemptions sought. Length, structure, and tabular content do not align.

Form N-CEN and Form N-PORT — periodic registered fund reporting

N-CEN (annual census) and N-PORT (monthly portfolio holdings) are the structured periodic regime for registered funds. ESCs granted Section 6(b) relief are typically exempted by the order from much of this regime, replaced with bespoke conditions. ESCs therefore appear in N-CEN/N-PORT rarely or in substantially limited form. These are not substitutes: they describe ongoing operations of registered funds, while Form 40-6B captures the one-time (plus amendments) application of entities seeking to avoid that ongoing regime.

Form D — Regulation D private placement notices

Surface overlap (both involve vehicles selling securities to a limited audience without full public registration) ends quickly. Form D is a Securities Act of 1933 notice of an unregistered offering under Rule 504 or 506 — it concerns the offering side. Form 40-6B is a 1940 Act application concerning investment-company status. A single ESC may file both: a Form D for the private offering to employees and a 40-6B for exemption from the 1940 Act. The datasets answer different questions under different statutes; neither stands in for the other.

Section 3(c)(1) and 3(c)(7) statutory exclusions

This is the most important conceptual contrast. Most US private investment vehicles avoid 1940 Act registration through self-executing statutory exclusions: 3(c)(1) (no more than 100 beneficial owners) or 3(c)(7) (qualified purchasers only). These funds file no analog to Form 40-6B because the exclusion requires no application or order. They surface in EDGAR mainly through Form D, through their advisers' Form ADV, and (for regulators) Form PF. ESCs, by contrast, generally cannot fit cleanly inside 3(c)(1) or 3(c)(7) because an employee-owned vehicle tied to a single employer falls outside the definitional contours of those exclusions — and therefore must obtain an affirmative Commission order. Form 40-6B exists precisely because the statutory-exclusion route is unavailable.

Form ADV — investment adviser registration

Form ADV registers and updates the adviser under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940; Form 40-6B concerns the fund vehicle itself under the Investment Company Act. The two layers cross-link in research (an ADV may list the ESC as a private fund client; the 40-6B may identify the adviser), but they describe different legal entities under different statutes. ADV is periodic and updated at least annually; 40-6B is filed once per matter with amendments during review.

Investment Company Act releases — notices and orders

The Commission-side bookend to Form 40-6B. Releases — the notice soliciting comment and the order granting or denying relief — are SEC-authored, typically shorter, more standardized, and conclusory. The 40-6B application is applicant-drafted, longer, and substantially more descriptive of the underlying business and employee population. A complete view of any matter requires both: this dataset for the request and supporting facts, the releases for outcome, conditions, and reasoning.

Boundary summary

Three axes keep Form 40-6B distinct from every adjacent dataset:

• Scope: one statutory provision (Section 6(b)), one applicant type (ESCs). Not a general application form (40-APP), not a registration statement (N-1A, N-2), not periodic reporting (N-CEN, N-PORT).
• Mechanism: an affirmative-order regime, not a statutory exclusion. This separates 40-6B from 3(c)(1)/3(c)(7) funds, which produce no analog filing, and from Form D, which is a notice rather than a permission request.
• Side of the matter: applicant-drafted application, not Commission-authored notice or order. Outcomes, conditions, and reasoning live in 40-OIP and the releases.

For the small population of ESCs that have sought 6(b) relief from May 2002 onward, this dataset captures the full applicant-drafted narrative — employer, eligible participant classes, investment program, and specific exemptions requested. ADV, Form D, and the releases complement it; none substitute for it.

Who Uses This Dataset

A defined set of professionals reads Form 40-6B applications closely for the substantive narrative: applicant background, eligibility classes, investment program, requested relief, and negotiated conditions.

1940 Act counsel

Investment management partners and associates at law firms drafting new applications mine prior 40-6B and 40-6B/A filings as precedent. They pull language from the "Requested Order" to track which Section 17, 18, and 23 provisions and which rules (17d-1, 17a-7, 22d-1) have been the subject of relief; from the "Applicant's Legal Analysis" for persuasive statutory arguments; and from the "Conditions" section for the standard co-investment, allocation, fee, leverage, and reporting safeguards that recur across orders. Amendments matter most: they reveal where staff pushed back and how applicants narrowed eligibility, restructured carry pools, or added safeguards.

In-house GCs and compliance officers at sponsoring employers

GCs, deputy GCs, and CCOs at firms that sponsor ESCs use the dataset both to scope a future application and to maintain compliance with an existing order. Their focus is the eligibility-class definitions (qualifying employees, former employees, family members, trusts, senior advisors), the investment-program description and its overlap with employer-managed funds, and the conditions on co-investment alongside client vehicles. Internal policies are mapped to the condition language prior applicants accepted.

Compensation and benefits structuring teams

Comp, benefits, and partnership-structuring teams designing co-investment, carry-pooling, and deferred-compensation vehicles read the "Description of Applicant" and "Investment Program" sections for funding mechanics (employer loans, payroll deduction, recourse vs. non-recourse), vesting and forfeiture interaction with redemption, and the calibration between senior and junior participation. The Section 17 affiliated-transaction relief is what permits the vehicle to invest alongside or in employer-managed funds on negotiated terms, so they study how that relief is framed and conditioned.

SEC Division of Investment Management staff

Staff reviewing new applications, particularly in the Chief Counsel's Office and the office handling exemptive applications, use the corpus as an internal precedent library. They consult the requested-relief, conditions, and legal-analysis sections to confirm consistency with established staff positions or to flag novel requests. The presence of both initial filings and amendments lets them trace how a proposal evolved through comment.

Academic researchers

Legal scholars of investment company regulation, finance researchers studying private vehicle structure, and labor economists studying executive compensation extract eligibility definitions, employer types, vehicle sizes (where disclosed), and condition language across filings. The longitudinal coverage from 2002 forward, combined with 40-6B/A amendments, supports both cross-sectional analysis and study of the negotiation process implied by amendment patterns.

Financial journalists

Reporters covering private equity, hedge funds, and compensation use the applicant identification, employer description, and eligibility classes to identify who is invited to participate, and the investment-program description to determine whether a vehicle invests in employer funds, third-party funds, or portfolio companies directly. The filings sometimes disclose carry pools or co-investment programs not visible in marketing materials.

Wealth and family-office advisors

Private wealth advisors and single-family office investment teams whose clients are offered ESC participation read the eligibility classes to confirm the client and family entities qualify, the investment program for strategy and concentration, and the conditions on transfer, redemption, and leverage that drive liquidity planning. Cross-application comparison benchmarks whether the offered terms are standard or unusually restrictive.

Tax and ERISA advisors

Tax counsel and ERISA specialists issuing memos on employee co-investment opportunities focus on the entity description (LP, LLC, series), the funding mechanics, the treatment of former employees and beneficiaries, and the conditions on affiliated transactions. These sections drive partnership tax characterization, carried-interest treatment, prohibited-transaction analysis where plan assets may be implicated, and disqualified-person analysis on the employer side.

Legal-tech vendors

Vendors building regulatory research tools, exemptive-application search products, and AI drafting assistants for investment management lawyers ingest the corpus for full-text search, clause extraction, and embedding-based retrieval. Teams building application drafters use the standard recitations of statutory authority, the typical structure of legal analysis, and canonical condition language to fine-tune or evaluate models and to ground retrieval-augmented systems in real precedent.

The dataset maps onto a defined set of workflows: drafting and reviewing applications, maintaining order compliance, structuring employee vehicles, supervising exemptive practice, studying it empirically, advising participating individuals, and productizing the corpus. Each role reads a different combination of the same five sections — applicant, eligibility, investment program, requested relief, and conditions.

Specific Use Cases

Form 40-6B applications are dense legal narratives with stable section structure but high applicant-specific variation. The dataset's small size and durable cross-record key (the 813- file number) make it well suited to precedent assembly, condition-language mining, and longitudinal study of exemptive practice.

1. Precedent search by 1940 Act counsel drafting a new application

A partner preparing a new 40-6B identifies prior orders that requested the same statutory relief (e.g., Section 17(a), Section 17(d)/Rule 17d-1, Section 17(e), Section 22(d)) by full-text searching the SGML-wrapped HTML application bodies for the cited sections and rule numbers. The "Applicant's Legal Analysis" and "Requested Order" sections of matching records are extracted and assembled into a precedent binder. entities[] provides counsel-of-record context (filer CIKs and co-applicants) for following up on individual matters.

2. Building a condition-language corpus for compliance and drafting

Compliance officers and drafting attorneys extract the "Conditions" section from every record to assemble a clause library covering co-investment ratios, allocation policies, board-approval triggers, fee and carry mechanics, leverage caps, and reporting cadences. Because conditions are negotiated during review, joining records on the 813- file number from entities[].fileNo lets them diff conditions between an original 40-6B and its 40-6B/A amendments, exposing exactly which safeguards staff insisted on.

3. Reconstructing application lifecycles from originals to amendments

Researchers and staff trace how individual applications evolved by grouping records on entities[].fileNo (the durable 813-NNNNNN Investment Company Act application number) and ordering within a group by filedAt. The formType field separates the initial 40-6B from each 40-6B/A. Section-level diffs across the chain reveal which eligibility classes were narrowed, which co-investment terms were tightened, and which representations were added before the order issued.

4. Monitoring competitor and peer-employer ESC filings

In-house GCs and benefits teams at sponsoring employers run a recurring sweep over new monthly containers, filtering on formType == "40-6B" or 40-6B/A and reading the "Description of Applicant" and "Eligibility Classes" sections of records filed by peer firms. This supports benchmarking on funding mechanics (recourse vs. non-recourse employer loans, payroll deduction, vesting interaction with redemption), eligible-participant scope (senior advisors, family trusts, former employees), and carry-pool design before launching or amending an internal vehicle.

5. Longitudinal academic study of exemptive practice

Legal scholars and finance researchers use the May 2002 to present coverage to study how 6(b) practice has shifted: which sections of the 1940 Act are most often the subject of requested relief, how eligibility-class definitions have broadened or narrowed, and how amendment frequency correlates with applicant type. filedAt timestamps support time-series construction; entities[].stateOfIncorporation, irsNo, and companyName support employer-industry coding; condition-section text supports content analysis of negotiated safeguards.

6. Powering retrieval and drafting tools for legal-tech vendors

Vendors building exemptive-application search and AI drafting assistants ingest every HTML body (after stripping the EDGAR SGML preamble described in the record anatomy), chunk by section heading ("Applicants", "Requested Order", "Legal Analysis", "Conditions"), and embed for retrieval. metadata.json provides the citation scaffolding (accessionNo, linkToFilingDetails, filedAt, filer companyName and cik) that grounds generated drafts in identifiable precedent and supports source attribution in RAG systems.

7. Mapping the population of employees' securities companies

Because ESCs cannot rely on Section 3(c)(1) or 3(c)(7) and produce no analog public registration, the 40-6B corpus is one of the few systematic windows into who operates them. Aggregating entities[] across the dataset yields a roster of ESC vehicles, their sponsoring employers and co-applicants, state of organization, and fiscal year-end. Joining this roster against Form ADV (adviser) and Form D (offering) datasets produces a cross-statute view of each vehicle that neither dataset supports alone.

Dataset Access

The Form 40-6B Files Dataset can be accessed in three ways: through a JSON metadata endpoint, as a single full-archive download, or by retrieving individual monthly container files.

Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-406b-files.json

This endpoint returns dataset-level metadata and a list of all available container files. Returned fields include the dataset name, description, last updated timestamp, earliest sample date, total record count, total dataset size in bytes, form types covered (40-6B and 40-6B/A), the container format (ZIP), the file types included in each container (HTML, JSON, TXT, PDF), the full dataset download URL, and an array of containers with per-container metadata including object key, size, record count, last updated timestamp, and a direct download URL.

This endpoint does not require an API key. It can be polled regularly to detect which containers were modified in the most recent refresh by comparing the updatedAt field on each container, allowing incremental downloads instead of re-pulling the entire archive.

Example response:

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          {
        

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            "datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-69a2-b94d-b6910d0661d5",
        

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            "datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-406b-files.zip",
        

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            "name": "Form 40-6B Files Dataset",
        

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            "updatedAt": "2026-04-17T02:54:24.145Z",
        

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            "earliestSampleDate": "2002-05-01",
        

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            "totalRecords": 211,
        

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            "totalSize": 9082598,
        

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            "formTypes": ["40-6B", "40-6B/A"],
        

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            "containerFormat": "ZIP",
        

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            "fileTypes": ["HTML", "JSON", "TXT", "PDF"],
        

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            "containers": [
        

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              {
        

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                "downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-406b-files/2026/2026-03.zip",
        

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                "key": "2026/2026-03.zip",
        

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                "size": 412338,
        

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                "records": 4,
        

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                "updatedAt": "2026-04-17T02:54:24.145Z"
        

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              }
        

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            ]
        

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          }
        

Example request:

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          curl https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-406b-files.json
        

Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-406b-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

This endpoint streams the complete dataset as a single ZIP archive containing every monthly container from the earliest sample date (2002-05-01) through the latest refresh. This endpoint requires an API key passed via the token query parameter.

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          curl -o form-406b-files.zip \
        

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            "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-406b-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY"
        

Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-406b-files/2026/2026-03.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Individual monthly containers can be downloaded directly using the YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip path pattern. Each container holds the filings submitted within that month and unpacks to per-filing folders containing the HTML, JSON, TXT, and PDF files. This endpoint requires an API key.

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          curl -o 2026-03.zip \
        

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            "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-406b-files/2026/2026-03.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY"
        

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          import requests
        

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          url = "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-406b-files/2026/2026-03.zip"
        

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          response = requests.get(url, params={"token": "YOUR_API_KEY"}, stream=True)
        

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          with open("2026-03.zip", "wb") as f:
        

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              for chunk in response.iter_content(chunk_size=8192):
        

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                  f.write(chunk)
        

Frequently Asked Questions

What form does this dataset cover?

The dataset covers Form 40-6B and Form 40-6B/A. Form 40-6B is the application filed under Section 6(b) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 by an "employees' securities company" seeking an order from the SEC exempting the company from all or specified provisions of the Act; Form 40-6B/A is its amendment vehicle, used to update or supplement the original application during the Division of Investment Management's review.

What does one record in this dataset represent?

Each record is a single EDGAR submission of either a Form 40-6B or 40-6B/A, captured as a self-contained accession folder under the path YYYY-MM/<18-digit-accession>/ inside a monthly ZIP container. The folder contains a structured metadata.json sidecar and the HTML application document wrapped in EDGAR's SGML per-document header. Records are uniquely keyed by accession number, and the formType field in metadata.json is the only authoritative indicator of whether a record is an original or an amendment.

Who is required to file Form 40-6B?

The legal filer is an employees' securities company as defined in Section 2(a)(13) of the Investment Company Act — typically a private pooled vehicle (limited partnership or LLC) sponsored by an employer to let employees co-invest with the firm. Section 6(b) applications are almost always joint, with co-applicants such as the sponsoring employer, the general partner or investment adviser, and affiliated funds or feeder vehicles. The contemplated employee, director, and family-member investors themselves have no individual filing obligation.

How are amendments linked to original applications?

Amendments are linked to their underlying application through the SEC file number — the 813-NNNNNN series file number assigned to Investment Company Act exemptive applications, available in entities[].fileNo. Accession numbers are unique per submission and do not chain amendments to originals on their own, so reconstructing an application's lifecycle requires grouping records by file number and ordering by filedAt.

What time period does the dataset cover?

The dataset begins on May 1, 2002, reflecting the EDGAR electronic-filing horizon for Form 40-6B rather than any change in the underlying obligation. Coverage runs forward through the latest monthly refresh. Pre-EDGAR Section 6(b) applications and orders exist in the Commission's historical paper files and published Investment Company Act release stream but are not part of this digital dataset.

What file format is the dataset distributed in?

The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers under the path pattern YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip. Each container unpacks to a single YYYY-MM/ folder holding one accession folder per filing; each accession folder contains a small metadata.json sidecar (typically under 2 KB) and the HTML application document with EDGAR's SGML per-document header preserved. GRAPHIC-type image attachments and the consolidated complete-submission .txt are referenced by URL in metadata.json but are not materialized inside the ZIP.

How does this dataset differ from Form 40-APP?

Form 40-APP is the catch-all application for exemptive, no-action, or interpretive relief under the 1940 Act outside the Section 6(b) ESC route — used by registered funds for affiliated-transaction relief, fund-of-funds, multi-class share relief, and similar matters. Form 40-6B is restricted to ESCs invoking Section 6(b). The document structure, amendment handling, and notice-and-order workflow are nearly identical, but the statutory hook and applicant population are different, so the two datasets do not substitute for each other.