The MFWire.com reported in June that
RiverPark Advisors was preparing its entrance into the mutual fund business. Now, the Manhattan-based firm, which is run by
Baron Capital alums, has rolled out five of its six planned mutual funds. Two of the newly launched funds are managed in-house and the other three utilize sub-advisors:
Wedgewood Partners,
Gravity Capital Management and
Cohanzick Management. [
SEC filing]
| Morty Schaja RiverPark Advisors Founder, CEO | |
"We are mutual fund veterans, we very much believe in the mutual fund industry," said RiverPark managing partner and CEO
Morty Schaja, a former president and chief operating chief operating officer at Baron Capital who went on to start RiverPark, in an interview with
The MFWire.com.
"If you look at what's happened over the last three, four, five years, a lot of branded competitors in the mutual fund world did not live up to implicit commitments they made to shareholders. I think we can do a better job for shareholders," Schaja said.
The five no-load offerings are:
RiverPark Large Cap Growth Fund
RiverPark/Wedgewood Fund
RiverPark Small Cap Growth
RiverPark Short Term High Yield Fund
RiverPark/Gravity Long-Biased Fund
The funds came into existence on October 1
and starting today became available through
Charles Schwab's OneSource mutual fund marketplace. Schaja sees the funds getting on
Fidelity's FundsNetwork platform in the next couple of weeks.
"Our intention is to be in the major supermarkets," he said.
For each fund, RiverPark is initially offering two share classes, retail and institutional. The firm has filed for C shares [
SEC filing], but did not launch them yet.
"There's no rush at all," Schaja said. "It's just an option in case."
To promote the new products, "we'll be doing mailings and reaching out to people we know in the industry," Schaja said.
RiverPark will have booths at the Schwab Impact Conference next week and the NAFPA Connections Conference the week after next.
The company has also recently hired a PR firm,
MacMillan Communications.
Schaja started RiverPark in 2006. Other Baron alums that have joined River Park include chief investment officer
and managing partner
Mitch Rubin, chief marketing officer and partner
Matt Kelly,
principal and portfolio manager Conrad van Tienhoven and head trader
Kristi Caruso.
Last year, RiverPark became the primary sub-adviser to four active ETFs sponsored by Grail Advisors. The ETFs, marketed as the industry's first single-manager ETFs in the equity space using active management, were
launched in October of last year. In August, two of the products --
RP Technology ETF and
RP FInanical ETF -- were liquidated due to weak flows.
RiverPark's newly launched line of mutual funds uses
DST Systems as transfer agent,
SEI Investments Global Fund Services as administrator, SEI Investments Distribution Co. as distributor,
Brown Brothers Harriman as custodian,
Blank Rome LLP as fund counsel and
Cohen Fund Audit Services as independent registered public
accounting firm.
As for the sixth mutual fund RiverPark filed for in June, Schaja said the firm has not yet set a timeframe for the launch. 
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