ARCO principals George Colman and Peter Whiting have been running their long/short Australian equities absolute return fund since 2009.
The fund rebranded from its original name, Optimal Fund Management Australia, after it received a significant investment from family office Burnham Group in 2016.
ARCO’s fund was already on the Powerwrap platform and has now been added to Netwealth and Hub24.
Burnham chair Bruce Loveday became the chair of ARCO in June 2016, and has set about restructuring the fund from a hedge fund into a more retail-orientated product.
Speaking to InvestorDaily, Mr Loveday said the fund previously had a $500,000 minimum investment and monthly liquidity, which has since been changed to a $20,000 minimum and daily liquidity.
The fund also received a rating from Zenith Investment Partners in May 2018.
Mr Loveday described ARCO as something of a “well-kept secret”.
“George and Peter would acknowledge that their fascination with investment markets has probably been what they’ve spent almost all of their time doing. They’ve been looking after the existing clients, but they haven’t been out developing new ones,” Mr Loveday said.
ARCO appointed former NAB Asset Management head of distribution Jason Huddy in 2016 to lead the retail push.
“Normally you might expect that a 10-year-old business with $150 million in FUM would have had terrible performance,” he said.
“But in fact it’s had pretty good performance. Our challenge now is to make it less of a well-kept secret and do a continually better job of explaining to investors and advisers alike how this strategy can really underpin the core of their portfolio,” Mr Loveday said.
