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The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered that ₹9,122 crore be disbursed within three weeks to the unitholders of Franklin Templeton’s six mutual fund schemes that are proposed to be wound up.
A Bench of Justices SA Nazeer and Sanjiv Khanna said the disbursal of money would be done in proportion to unitholders’ interest in the assets.
In the proceedings conducted through video conferencing, the Bench asked State Bank of India Mutual Fund to disburse the money as all the counsels gave consent to the court’s order.
The Bench granted liberty to the litigating parties to approach the court in case of any difficulty in the disbursal of money to the unitholders. The court also gave the parties liberty to move applications in case of any difficulty arising out of the process.
The lawyer, representing Franklin Templeton Trusts Services Limited, told the Bench that the company would render cooperation to SBI Mutual Fund.
A Franklin Templeton spokesperson said: “We are pleased that, as requested by us and in the best interests of unitholders, the court has directed the distribution of ₹9,122 crore (distributable surplus as of January 15, 2021) to unitholders. As previously stated, we went ahead with the difficult decision of winding up these schemes because of our firm belief that this was the right decision to preserve value for investors, as evidenced by the generation of cash in these schemes over the last 9 months.”
The Bench, had on January 25, said it would first deal with the issues related to objections to the e-voting process for winding up of the six mutual fund schemes and distribution of money to the unitholders. Prior to this, the apex court had granted three days for filing of objections to the e-voting on winding up of six mutual fund schemes of the company. It was also told by counsel for Franklin Templeton that an order be passed for allowing distribution of money to the unitholders.
E-voting process
Earlier, the apex court had asked the Securities and Exchange Board of India to appoint an observer for overseeing the e-voting process.
The voting on the winding up of Franklin Templeton’s six mutual fund schemes had taken place in the last week of December and was approved by the majority of unitholders.
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