BGL, SelfWealth join DomaCom’s Kidman Station bid

SMSF provider BGL Corporate Solutions and peer-to-peer investment start-up SelfWealth are the latest names to partner with the fractional property investment fund in its rural crowdfunding venture.

In December last year platform DomaCom launched a plan to potentially acquire and allow retail investors to invest in Kidman Station, Australia's biggest private landholding and one accounting for 1.3 per cent of Australia's total land area.

As part of the newly struck relationship, SelfWealth will allow BGL Corporate Solutions' SMSF clients to compare their fund's performance against the top 200 funds, meaning they can compare their fund against their peers and professional fund managers, tracking the movements of the better performing funds.

"This is a great example of innovative businesses co-operating in the financial services industry," DomaCom chief executive Arthur Naoumidis said.

"Coming into the Kidman bidding six months late means a successful bid is a long shot, but with partners such as BGL and SelfWealth believing in our model and helping to promote it we may actually succeed. If we do, it will be the world's largest successful crowdfunding campaign – quite fitting for the world's largest cattle property."

BGL Corporate Solutions' managing director, Ron Lesh, said: "We support innovation and DomaCom is leading the way in developing a solution that breaks down high-cost assets such as property into small chunks to give investors access to assets they normally could not buy. The potential acquisition of Kidman Station demonstrates the scalability of the DomaCom model."

A DomaCom spokesman confirmed that nearly 4,000 people had expressed interest in investing up to $55 million in the bid to secure the vast pastoral holdings that comprise 17 properties and three supporting properties in breeding, feedlot and cropping. The spokesman added there is a clear appetite for rural property and many expressed their support for other agricultural acquisitions if the Kidman bid does not succeed.

"There has never been an opportunity for investors to participate in rural property of their choice until DomaCom developed the fractional model," he said.