(pictured: Grahame Evans)

DomaCom, the innovative property fund manager, which recently hit the headlines through a crowd-funding plan to buy the famous Kidman agricultural holdings, is looking to raise at least $10 million through an IPO for its own business.

DomaCom has lodged its prospectus with ASIC and the offer has been underwritten for about half of the planned raising through its existing shareholders. The minimum to be raised is $5 million, while oversubscriptions will be allowed for up to $23.7 million. The offer goes live to investors today (July 11).

The company’s core business is the DomaCom Fund, which allows investors to buy fractional holdings in real estate. It tends to target the SMSF market, because of its historical liking for property.

Grahame Evans, DomaCom chair, says in the prospectus that the listing will allow the company to:

• increase its marketing efforts into both the intermediary and direct consumer channels for its products;
• support the planned development and launch of new products, such as the DomaCom Equity Release and DomaCom Corporate Bond products;
• improve the financial strength of the DomaCom Group;
• provide a liquid market for DomaCom shares and allow new shareholders to invest in DomaCom;
• assist in retaining and attracting employees to DomaCom; and
• provide a mechanism for some existing shareholders to realise all or part of their investment, subject to receipt of applications having an aggregate value of $10 million or greater.

Evans is well known in the financial advice world as a former chief executive of several big dealer groups – he left the big PIS group, where he was general manager, in 2012 to form GPS Wealth.

He says: “The key objective for us is for the DomaCom Fund to become a preferred solution for independent financial advisers (IFAs) when including direct property within their client’s asset allocation strategies.

“We are particularly targeting the burgeoning SMSF sector within the financial services market for these reasons:

• SMSFs like transparency and control, and the DomaCom Fund through its platform allows SMSFs to choose specific property investments;
• SMSFs like property as evidenced by the growth of limited recourse borrowing arrangements for SMSFs; and
• the SMSF sector is approaching $600 Billion in size.”

DomaCom was founded by IT expert Arthur Naoumidis, the firm’s chief executive, in 2011. He had previously founded Praemium in 2001, which by the time he left had assets under administration of more than $40 billion. He also launched the industry’s first online SMA in partnership with BlackRock and took the Praemium SMA concept to the UK.