The Hindu Business Line : Funds look overseas for naming schemes

Consider these monikers: Classic Equity, Emerging Leaders, Contra, Star. As anyone who has dabbled in equity funds in recent times will tell you, these are names selected by a section of fund houses, including Standard Chartered MF and JM Mutual Fund.

What is `coincidental' — at least, that is what Cholamandalam Distribution has called it after a simple research — is that these labels have been around in other markets, due to internationally-reputed players that have used them for their own funds.

So, Standard Chartered Classic Equity, the first equity product from the bank-sponsored MF's stable, may actually find a big brother in Putnam Classic Equity, while JM Emerging Leaders may draw a parallel with Dreyfus Emerging Leaders Fund and Ausbil Australian Emerging Leaders Fund.

And SBI MF's Contra Fund, which has lately come up well in terms of performance, may strike a chord with Fidelity Contra, GE Contra and Vertex Contra.

"The Hollywood-Bollywood deja vu is not restricted to films alone," Chola Distribution maintains in a light-hearted and veiled reference to the scrounging allegedly done by a section of filmmakers. The market regulator's edict - naming funds in a simple and comprehensible manner - may well take into account international naming practices, the distributor added.

A few domestic fund houses have picked up interesting names in the past, intermediaries point out. Some of them refer particularly to DSP Merrill Lynch MF's T.I.G.E.R. Fund, the abbreviation being The Infrastructure Growth and Economic Reforms. Incidentally, ING Vysya MF has recently applied to SEBI for what it has billed the L.I.O.N. Fund.

The regulator is known to have picked holes in certain naming proposals earlier. JM MF, for instance, had to drop the tag `Momentum' from what later became a monthly income plan.

Product development executives working for fund houses have lately come up with such titles as Opportunities (DSP ML, HSBC, Chola and so on), Midcap and Flexicap.

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