Rothschild Asset Management and Larch Lane Advisors are now in the mutual fund business.

This spring the asset manager and the fund of hedge funds unveiled a joint venture, Rothschild Larch Lane Management Company, to launch multi-manger, liquid alternative, open-end mutual funds. Now they've launched their first fund, the Rothschild Larch Lane Alternatives Fund.

"We are planning to make the fund available in a variety of intermediary channels," Mike Tamasco, the co-head of RAM, tells MFWire, adding that they're also seeing "growing interest from the institutional pension consulting communiity."

Tamasco will use RAM's ramped up distribution capabilities to bring the new fund to the marketplace. Tamasco joined RAM three years ago as chief marketing officer and became co-head of the asset manager earlier this year. So far he's built out an eight-person client-facing sales team, and he says he "plans to continue to grow the sales team globally." Larch Lane will help distribute the new fund, too.

"We're utilizing the combined resources of both firms," Tamasco says, while noting that he expects RAM to shoulder the lion's share of the distribution efforts.

As reported by MFWire in May, Rothschild and Larch Lane brought in four sub-advisors to power the new mutual fund. Ellington Management Group is running a relative value strategy and a tactical trading strategy for the fund, Karya Capital Management is running a global macro strategy, Mizuho Alternative Investments is running another global macro strategy, and Winton Capital Management is running an equity trading strategy. The idea, Tamasco says, is to offer a "risk-balanced approach to portfolio construction" whose returns have a low correlation to that of equity or bond markets.

"We've spent a significant amount of time developing a liquid alternatives fund solution that we believe meets investor demand, including devoting substantial resources to portfolio and risk management," states Mark Jurish, founder and CEO of Larch Lane. 

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