Former head of All Star Funds, Kate Mulligan, has set up a management consulting firm specializing in funds management – King Irving Consulting Group.

Mulligan, who practiced law with Allens and Freehills before getting into the funds management industry with Tyndall Investment Management in 1995, said King Irving (named after her grandfather) would provide both strategic and tactical advice and services.

“I’m a hands-on person, so I want to be able to tactically execute strategies for clients,” she said. The two main areas of focus are: international managers looking to asset up in Australia –requiring things like unit registry, admin and custody – or new Australian boutiques; and existing managers looking to grow their businesses.

“I have had several law firms referring this sort of business to me already,” she said. “It’s specialist work and it’s not necessarily the sort of thing that you want your new country head to be doing.”

Mulligan established All Star Funds under the Professional Investment Services financial planning umbrella, associated with the listed Centrepoint Alliance, in 2006. When combined with the Ventura funds, also owned by Centrepoint Alliance, the business had about $800 million under management. She left last year after a management restructure following the merger of All Star and Ventura under the company’s platform business.

All Star brought several institutional managers to the retail market, including Maple-Brown Abbott, Kaplan Funds Management and Greg Matthews’ Independent Asset Management.

“Our value proposition at All Star was our manager selection,” Mulligan says. “I thought at the time that the index-aware managers were likely to be commoditized. So we decided to focus on high-alpha managers who were not readily available to the retail market.”