Orange County is home to a number of famous financial firms, including Pacific Investment Management Co. and Pacific Alternate Asset Management Co.
It also has some large financial managers who are much less well-known, including these half a dozen we’ve been able to uncover:
n WCM Investment Management, a Laguna Beach-based firm with 40 employees, features a lovely photo of the beach on its website.
Few would guess that the employee-owned company is becoming well-known on Wall Street.
Its assets ballooned to $23 billion last year, up about tenfold in five years. Its biggest fund, Focused International Growth Fund, or WCMIX, has $5.9 billion in assets and climbed 31% last year.
The company works only with wealthy individual and institutional investors, as its minimum account size is $10 million and its standard fee is 1% of assets, according to regulatory filings.
While founded in 1976, it later changed hands to current principal owners and co-chief executives Kurt Winrich, who joined in 1984, and Paul Black, who came on in 1989.
• Randall Long started SageView Advisory Group in 1989, and the Irvine-based company has grown to $88 billion in assets under management, according to a regulatory filing. Long, who owns more than 75%, has provided consulting and fiduciary advisory services to over 250 major corporations in the areas of plan design, investment consulting, record keeping, compliance, employee education, and communication.
• Capital Group is a Los Angeles-based firm that manages $1.6 trillion in assets and is best known as the home of American Funds, a family of more than 40 mutual funds.
But few may realize that 2,200 employees, almost a third of its workforce of 7,500, work in Irvine. The office handles functions that include compliance, portfolio administration and quarterly reports.
• MIG Capital LLC in Newport Beach had $840.5 million in net assets under management as of Dec. 31.
Barron’s Penta Top 100 Hedge Funds ranked it No. 21 last year, saying it was an equity long/short fund with a three-year compounded return of 13.61% as of 2016.
Not bad for a fund run by Richard Merage, the son of billionaire Paul Merage, who made his fortune through the sale of the iconic Hot Pockets and Lean Pockets brand and for whom the business school at the University of California-Irvine is named. Another son, Greg Merage, runs MIG Real Estate, which has $1.8 billion in assets in 11 states and Canada.
• TGS Management Co. LLC in Irvine is a pioneering “quant” hedge fund that follows numbers-based leads of the legendary Edward O. Thorp. Co-founder Fred Taylor is among OC’s wealthiest people, with a Business Journal estimate of $1 billion.
• TriGuard Management LLC of Irvine is an independently owned private equity investment management firm that managed $1.7 billion as of Sept. 30. Its investment philosophy is to capitalize on market inefficiencies and generate strong cash flows through various economic cycles.
It was co-founded in 2005 by Ronn Cornelius and Samuel Tang, who both worked in Pacific Life Insurance Co.’s equities unit, and Brian M. Smith.
