Established in 2014 and headquartered out of Sydney, Australia, Arowana Funds Management has managed capital for external investors across several strategies including private equity, private credit, special situations, and listed global equities.
The genesis of Arowana was an enterprise software business called RuleBurst Haley that was turned around and scaled globally before its acquisition by Oracle in 2008. With some of the proceeds of that sale, Arowana Capital was set up to operate as a private equity fund, with our principal’s capital as well as capital from external family offices and institutional fund of funds. In addition, we germinated an unlisted fund in 2009 to invest in listed equities, but in this case with only the capital of our own in-house team. Both the private equity fund and the listed equities fund performed admirably over the ensuing five years, generating net returns of about 20% per annum.
As a result of interest from external investors, we decided to formally launch a funds management business called Arowana Funds Management in 2014. In 2015, we launched two funds:the ASX-listed Contrarian Value Fund (formerly the Arowana Australasian Value Opportunities Fund) and the unlisted Arowana Australasian Special Situations Fund (AASSF). In 2018, we launched a private credit fund called the Arowana Australian Special Income Opportunities Fund (ASIOF).
In 2019, we decided to conduct a strategic review of our Australian funds management activities, given the increasing regulatory volatility and costs for financial services industry participants in Australia. Furthermore, we wanted to assess whether our funds management activities were consistent with the B Corp triple bottom line of people, profit, and planet. Our conclusion was to exit our Australian funds and return monies to investors. We have since profitably exited both CVF and ASIOF whilst AASSF is in harvest mode.
We will however continue to grow our impact funds management activities across Southeast Asia. In addition, we will be scaling up our venture capital investment arm which is headquartered in London. Both entities are more aligned with our B Corp status and our purpose of growing people, companies, and value.
