This is the third installment in our three-part series on the movement of talent from bank proprietary (prop) trading desks to hedge fund managers.  The series focuses on the legal and business considerations raised by such moves, and highlights the different considerations faced by the different constituencies.  The first article in the series focused on the talent perspective, that is, the considerations that investment and non-investment personnel should address when moving from a bank to a hedge fund manager.  See “Key Legal Considerations in Connection with the Movement of Talent from Proprietary Trading Desks to Start-Up or Existing Hedge Fund Managers: The Talent Perspective (Part One of Three),” Hedge Fund Law Report, Vol. 3, No. 49 (Dec. 17, 2010).  The second article in the series focused on the bank perspective, and demonstrated that while banks face many of the same issues as talent in this context, banks often face those issues from a different perspective, and weight those issues differently.  See “Key Legal Considerations in Connection with the Movement of Talent from Proprietary Trading Desks to Start-Up or Existing Hedge Fund Managers: The Bank Perspective (Part Two of Three),” Hedge Fund Law Report, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Jan. 14, 2011).  This article focuses on the perspective of the hedge fund manager to which talent moves.  While the legal and business issues faced by such recipient managers are complex, at a broad level, they can be broken down into a simple binary question: Are your hiring decisions motivated by the goal of buying talent or access?  Generally, if you are looking to buy talent, you are okay, but if you are looking to buy access, you are in trouble.  Put slightly differently, while a variety of legal disciplines govern the relationships between hedge fund managers and their employees, the unifying theme among those disciplines is ensuring that business success or failure is based on merit commercialized on a level playing field.  If this sounds too pious to be plausible, read on – and also read some of our cautionary tales of recent access-buying in the hedge fund arena.  To illustrate this general idea, this article discusses the following categories of considerations for hedge fund managers receiving talent: avoiding insider trading violations based on material, non-public information possessed by incoming talent; the three-step process for avoiding liability for aiding and abetting a breach by a new employee of that employee’s employment or post-employment covenants with his or her former bank employer, including non-competition agreements (non-competes), non-solicitation agreements (non-solicits), termination, severance and option agreements; special considerations in connection with the movement of teams (as opposed to individuals); avoiding liability for unauthorized use by an incoming employee of trade secrets or other intellectual property owned by a former bank employer; use of data regarding employee performance at a prior bank employer; avoiding pay-to-play violations; and what to look for when performing background checks.