Bennelong Funds Management, the Melbourne-based boutique funds management company with $1.8 billion under management, has enticed Mark Burgess and Kristiaan Rehder from competitor Herschel to manage its second hedge fund.

Burgess and Rehder will start work on September 1. They will seek to raise as much as $500 million. Burgess was a portfolio manager of Herschel’s absolute return fund. Rehder was a fund manager. They will work in Melbourne.

Bennelong has another hedge fund, two Australian share funds, and a property fund. It hires managers, gives them a majority stake in their funds, takes a minority shareholding while providing administration and compliance services.

“We have aspirations to continue to diversify in a measured way,” says Jarrod Brown, chief executive of Bennelong.