After getting the go-ahead from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), IDBI Bank is all set to apply to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for a mutual fund licence.
According to sources, the market regulator is planning to introduce colour forms for client registration in a bid to stop brokers from making changes after a client has filled up the form. Currently, there are boxes each for cash derivatives and debt, and investors have to indicate whether they want to trade in the cash market or futures and options. In some cases, brokers themselves click on the derivatives option without the permission of the client.
At least 14 mutual fund schemes have closed down, according to announcements made by fund houses. The reason: they had less than 20 investors in the scheme or a single investor was accounting for more than 25 per cent of the corpus. According to Sebi's guidelines, any scheme should have at least 20 investors. Also, no investor can account for over 25 per cent of the corpus.
Top Satyam executives accelerated sales of their shares in the company in close to three months before the company's aborted December 16 bid to buy two developers controlled by Ramalinga Raju's family.
Foreign pension funds are making a beeline for India despite the turmoil in global markets.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India, after receiving comments from various parties, said QIPs should be based on the average price of the shares two weeks prior to the issue.
Distressed by the falling spree of Indian equities, fund managers are looking at various avenues of diversification. At a time when emerging markets, including India, are vulnerable to global cues and are more coupled, frontier markets showless or almost no correlation. Franklin Templeton was the first to spot an opportunity and has already filed for a MENA fund (Middle East North Africa Fund), which will invest in some of the frontier markets.
Uncertainty in equity markets and a waning investor response have led to a slowdown in new demat accounts, a key gauge of retail investors' sentiment towards the market. Sluggishness in the primary market has added to the woes as a large number of investors generally tap equity markets through IPOs.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India is likely to clear the long pending application of Taurus Parsoli Ethical Fund to launch a Shariah fund by the end of this month. A go-ahead to Taurus would pave the way for other mutual fund houses to launch similar funds.
A depreciating dollar and the uncertainty in the equity markets globally are adding to the sheen of the yellow metal. With gold prices surging 20 per cent in the last two months, Gold ETFs are back in focus.
The market regulator's decision to put resolution of disputes on the fast track is working well. In just over a year after announcing rules for consent orders, the Securities and Exchange Board of India has settled close to 83 cases.
Last week, after months of scrutiny, the Forward Markets Commission, the regulator for futures trading in commodities, approved a proposal from state-owned MMTC Ltd and finance-to-real estate group Indiabulls to set up a national multi-commodity exchange.
The Aditya Birla group is close to buying the Reddy family's 66.32 per cent stake in Apollo Sindhoori Capital Investments (ASCIL), marking a re-entry of the group into the broking business.
UTI Asset Management Company, the country's fourth-largest mutual fund, is reviewing its proposed initial public offering in view of the turbulence in the global financial markets and the meltdown in Indian equities. The management is having a rethink on the IPO because of the bearish sentiment prevailing in the markets and a lack of investor appetite, according to a source familiar with the development.
VMIL officials declined to comment on the development. According to sources close to the development, VMIL will sell stake to raise money for expanding Hungama, the content and mobile services arm. The Mumbai-based company has already held two to three rounds of meetings with these private equity investors. The company's valuation has been pegged at Rs 800 crore (Rs 8 billion). The funds raised would be used for Hungama's expansion.
Private equity major DE Shaw is investing Rs 630 crore (Rs 6.3 billion) in Noida-based International Amusement Ltd (IAL), the promoters of Appu Ghar. This is the country's first private equity (PE) deal in an amusement park.
US-based buyout fund Carlyle, Providence Equity Partners, Warburg Pincus and Blackstone are understood to be exploring a buyout of Temasek's holding in Mumbai-based pure-play business process outsourcing firm Firstsource. The news triggered the company's share price to rise 6.76 per cent on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) to close at Rs 43.45 on Tuesday. Warburg Pincus has a stake in WNS, a BPO company, while Blackstone has a majority stake in Intelenet.
Foreign investors sold $2.8 bn stocks in the past quarter alone. FIIs trimmed their holding in the BSE 500 companies by nearly two percentage points to 17.8 per cent, bringing it back to June 2005 levels, according to a Citigroup report. FIIs pulled out shares worth $2.8 billion over the past quarter.
Industry observers said that direct investment has increased from 2 per cent to 6-7 per cent, which is a marginal rise of 5 percentage points. Many investors still prefer to invest through distributors in spite of a 2.25 per cent entry load. Inconveniences in the online process and asset management companies' (AMC) offices have kept investors from taking the direct option.
When markets are topsy-turvy, everyone -- including the companies' management, merchant bankers, retail and institutional investors -- chickens out.
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