Portland, Maine-based Absolute Investment Advisers is talking to a Pittsburgh-based consulting firm about selling its Absolute Strategies Fund to retirement plans. The hedge fund-style, multi-manager fund, has raised $145 million in assets in one year. Chris Aymond, sales and marketing principal, said the fund will offer plan participants diversification and access to "absolute returns, low correlation and low volatility relative to the broader markets, while doing it in an open-end mutual fund structure." Aymond could not disclose the consulting firm.

Michael Mullaney, v.p. portfolio manager at Fiduciary Trust Company, said although the fund's track record is short, he expects investments to grow in the next year if the fund performs as well as it performed since its inception. FTC has invested nearly a $1 million in the fund.

Absolute Investment Advisors has set volatility levels within a 4-6% range and beta at under .25. Aymond said the fund is expected to produce average annual returns in the high single digits. In the first quarter of 2006 Absolute Strategies yielded a total return of 3% and a less than .25 beta to the Standard & Poor's 500. The expense ratio is 1.93%. The fund has 13 sub-advisors, which invest in different strategies such as distressed debt, long/short and opportunistic long equity. The sub-advisors include Horizon Asset Management, SSI Investment Management and Loomis Sayles & Company while the administrative agent is Citigroup Global Transaction Services.