Beck, Mack & Oliver just tapped an independent marketing firm to help boost one of its two mutual funds.

Senior member Bob Beck and member Zac Wydra confirmed that the New York City-based investment counseling and mutual fund firm recently teamed up with Richmond, Virginia-based Lyndhurst Investment Partners for marketing the Beck, Mack & Oliver Partners Fund (BMPEX), the mutual fund version of BM&O's U.S. equity strategy.

"We wanted someone who understands how we operate and our approach to value investing," Beck told MFWire.com.

BM&O launched BMPEX as a commingled fund in 1991, then transformed it into a mutual fund two years ago. The large cap, no-load fund currently boasts about $32 million in assets, and David Yazdan of Lyndhurst estimates that the whole BM&O U.S. equity strategy (including the fund) holds about $250 million in assets. Wydra confided that BM&O aims to soft-close the strategy at $1 billion to $1.25 billion in total assets and then hard-close around $1.5 billion.

That plan to limit the fund's growth is important to both BM&O and Lyndhurst.

"There are very few marketing professionals in the mutual fund world who would work with a firm that wanted to limit capacity of a product," Wydra told MFWire.com.

Yazdan explained that Lyndhurst specifically targets bottom-up, fundamental managers with concentrated portfolios and the desire to cap portfolio size.

"Most marketers want to have unlimited capacity," Yazdan told MFWire.com. "It doesn't fit the large consultant model to find the little opportunities."

The story of Lyndhurst

Todd Peters, a due diligence veteran, launched Lyndhurst Investment Consulting in 2003, offering outsourced chief investment officer work. Brooklyn-based David Yazdan, a business development veteran, left Third Avenue two and a half years ago. He then joined Peters to launch the brand new Lyndhurst Investment Partners, with Third Avenue as their first client and Kingstown Capital, an event-driven limited partnership, as client number two.

"We formed Lyndhurst Investment Partners in July of 2009 with the intent of being very selective," about the type of managers and about limiting capacity, Peters told MFWire.com.

BM&O, which signed on in November, is Lyndhurst Investment Partners' third client, second in the mutual fund space. Though Kingstown basically closed to new investments after jumping from $50 million in assets in 2009 to about $750 million, Peters and Yazdan are happy to stay focused on these three clients alone for now.

"We would only work with two or three managers at any given time ... I think our work load is pretty full right now," Yazdan said, while noting that they could add more clients further down the line. "We're also looking for interesting managers to have on deck ... Folks are constantly introducing us to managers."

"We want to get to know managers both personally and professionally," Yazdan added.

Lyndhurst Investment Partners helps its clients with due diligence, mailings, presentations, and "prequalifying potential allocators" from a network of contacts.

"We do everything," Yazdan said. "It's a lot of telling the story ... Many of them have been waiting for our next manager."

Meanwhile, Peters shut down Lyndhurst Investment Consulting earlier this year, while continuing due diligence work. He serves as chair of the investment committee for NS Capital, a wealth manager in Connecticut. 

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