The Hindu Business Line : Fidelity Fund gets SEBI nod

Fidelity Fund Management, one of the world's leading financial services providers, has received an in-principle approval from SEBI for starting its mutual fund business in the country.

The fund house hopes to start operations towards the end of the year. It has appointed Ms Ashu Suyash as the Business Head and Mr Arun Mehra as the equity fund manager. Fidelity currently manages assets of over $141.5 billion for non-US investors under mutual funds and pension funds.

SBI Mutual Fund is to launch SBI Magnum Income Fund Floating Rate Plan. SBI Magnum Floating Rate Plan is an open-ended income scheme. The fund comes with a Long-Term Option and a Short-Term Option. The primary objective of the fund is to mitigate interest rate risk and seek to generate regular income.

The initial public offer opened on July 5, 2004 and closes on July 14, 2004. The minimum investment amount in Floating Rate Short-Term Plan and the Long-Term Plan (Regular Option) is Rs 2,000. The minimum investment for the Floating Rate Long-Term Plan (Institutional Option) is Rs 50 lakh.

The schemes of IL&FS have been taken over by UTI Mutual Fund. The names of the 10 IL&FS schemes have, therefore, been changed. With this acquisition, the number of schemes under UTI Mutual Fund's product suite increases to 56 domestic schemes and four offshore funds. Its assets under management will exceed Rs 20,000 crore.

Benchmark Mutual Fund has decided to postpone the launch of its StraP (Systematically Trading Portfolio) scheme, although the scheme has been approved by SEBI. The fund house believes that the product is too sophisticated to be promoted properly by market intermediaries.

The initial public offering of Sundaram Leadership Fund, the equity-oriented fund launched by Sundaram Mutual Fund, has raised Rs 82.83 crore.

BL Research Bureau

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Investment Quiz

TRAI's consumer friendly measure

Question 'n' Auto

Budget proposals — Managing investments made easy

Budget, revenues and profit growth

Beyond tax breaks on capital gains

Budget: A delicate balancing act

Let's walk the Budget

Reforms on track