The Securities and Exchange Board of India has told the Unit Trust of India to bring down its investment in the equity of companies to five per cent over the next two years to fall in line with SEBI regulations for mutual funds. The two-year grace period offered by SEBI to UTI in this allows time to offload holdings without unduly disturbing the market. Immediate offloading of UTI’s holdings which are substantial in the case of several blue chip and public sector companies would lead to a crash in their market prices. Schedule VI of the SEBI mutual funds regulations of 1993 reads: “No individual scheme of the mutual fund should invest more than five per cent of its corpus in any one company’s shares. No mutual fund under all its schemes taken together should invest more than 10 per cent of any company’s paid up capital carrying voting rights...”

British media group sees future in digital world

Mr. Frank Barlow, a 64-year-old former newspaperman who doesn’t own a personal computer, is laying out his plan for the world’s multimedia future. The printed word, says the publishing executive, is dying. In its place, Mr. Barlow predicts a flurry of sound and video information, from CD-ROM books to interactive newspapers. “I’m not saying print will disappear, but it will decline over time,” says Mr. Barlow, seated on a couch in his slightly frayed office near Westminster Abbey. “I know this is heresy, of course, but it’s happening.” And it’s happening fast at Pearson PLC, the British media conglomerate that owns the Financial Times , a half interest in the Economist magazine, as well as the Penguin and Addison-Wesley publishing houses. Barlow took over as Pearson’s Managing director four years ago.

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