Friday, July 3, 2009

Indian MFs dominate world top-100 stock funds in Q2

Fifty one India-focused funds were among the world's top 100 performing stock funds in the quarter to June as domestic shares leapt by nearly half, recording their biggest surge in 17 years, data from fund tracker Lipper showed.
They are led by those investing in shares of infrastructure firms, a favoured theme in Asia's third largest economy after the Congress-lead coalition won a strong mandate in April-May polls raising hopes for higher spending on roads, ports and bridges.
The Lipper's list of 29,942 world stock funds with a track record of at least a quarter showed India funds recording an average 50.45 per cent jump in their net values in three months to June as compared to just over 18 per cent gain for the fund group.
India funds were led by Naya Bharat Property Company fund, domiciled in the Isle of Man, which gave a return of nearly 135 per cent, followed by JM Core 11 Fund, a concentrated 11-stock portfolio, which rose more than 100 per cent.
"Stocks in India were spurred on by a steady diet of positive macro data and the strong victory of the incumbent Congress party in national elections mid-May" said Rajeev Baddepudi, a senior research analyst for ASEAN at Lipper.
Indian shares surged 49.3 per cent during April-June, the fastest in Asia after Vietnam, on signs of economic recovery and hopes for market-friendly policies by the re-elected Congress-lead government.
The gain was the biggest rise for the benchmark in any quarter since it soared 124.5 per cent in January-March in 1992 when Manmohan Singh, the then finance minister, kicked off reforms to open up the economy.
INFRASTRUCTURE
Hopes are high that Manmohan Singh, currently in his second-term as prime minister, would further open up the economy to foreign investment and remove policy bottlenecks.
This has led to sharper surge in shares of infrastructure firms, with capital goods stocks rising nearly twice as fast as the benchmark index in June quarter, lifting portfolio gains for funds primarily investing in the sector.
For instance, all top five Indian funds part of the Lipper's top-100 list are infrastructure or property funds.
Fund houses JM Financial Asset Management and Sundaram BNP Paribas Mutual Fund have four funds each in the list, while Benchmark, India's passive fund manager, DBS Cholamandalam, SBI Funds Management and Taurus Mutual Fund had three schemes each.

Dena Bank ties-up with Fidelity Mutual Fund

Dena Bank, one of India's established public sector banks, has announced that it has inked a mutual agreement with Fidelity Mutual Fund, for the distribution of its products.
With this tie up, Fidelity Mutual Fund’s entire range of mutual funds will now be available at the branches of Dena Bank.
Dena Bank authorities stated in a communiqué that this strategic distribution tie-up with Fidelity Mutual Fund will offer our clients a variety of savings and investment solutions.
As per media reports, Dena Bank has a robust footprint across India.

Mutual funds' assets rise 5% in June

The mutual fund industry’s assets continued to grow in June. The average assets under management grew (AAUM) from Rs 639,129.81 crore to Rs 670993.13 crore, a rise of 5 per cent, or Rs 31,863.32 crore.
Market experts attributed this to a sharp rise in inflows in liquid and debt schemes. Assets of equity schemes increased mostly due to rise in stock prices. High liquidity in the system also helped mutual funds as they were able to garner excess funds.
Lakshmi Iyer, head (fixed income), Kotak Mutual Fund, said, “Inflows were observed in ultra short-term and short-term funds as well as arbitrage funds.”
In terms of percentage growth, Edelweiss Mutual Fund registered the highest growth of Rs 117.11 per cent to Rs 45 crore compared with the last month’s figure of Rs 21 crore. Morgan Stanley Mutual Fund and DBS Chola Mutual Fund’s assets grew over 15 per cent (see table)
Bharti AXA witnesses the highest fall of 10.6 per cent. Taurus and Canara Robeco saw dips of over 5 per cent.
The largest fund house, Reliance Mutual Fund, registered 5.5 per cent growth. The fund house, which crossed the Rs 1 lakh figure last month, saw a rise of Rs 5602.01 crore.
Sundeep Sikka, chief executive officer, Reliance Mutual Fund, said, “We have seen inflows in all the categories this time. While there was participation from all classes of investors, institutional inflows were significant.”
ICICI Mutual Fund’s assets grew 7 per cent to Rs 70,169.4 crore while HDFC Mutual Fund’s assets grew 3.7 per cent to Rs 78,197.9 crore.
Saurabh Nanavati, chief executive officer, Religare Mutual Fund, said, “There were inflows in equity schemes as well as short-term funds. Corporate money, which had gone out of the industry in September and October, is beginning to come back because of the good performance of the equity markets.”