Sebi should change the way issues are graded, say experts. In fact, the higher the grade of an IPO, the poorer has been its performance in the market.
Real estate companies appear to be the worst hit by the ongoing global uncertainties, coupled with the new norms for primary market issuances.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India plans to tighten the rules for transfer of sub-accounts by foreign institutional investors.
Sunil Sanghai, the head of the investment banking team speaks on Goldman Sachs' India plans, mergers and acquisitions, and the regulatory arena.
The government is considering a proposal to extend the benefit of tax pass-through to domestic venture capital funds on investments across all sectors in the coming Budget.
The software is being developed in association with the Central Record-keeping Agency. It is expected to debut by the end of this year. PFRDA is also looking to have an ombudsman for redressal of investor grievances. To increase liquidity of the scheme, there could also be Tier-II accounts by the end of this year, which would allow investors to withdraw money at any given point of time.
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.
For starters, the morning meetings at brokerages have been advanced to 8-8.15.
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.
Move comes within months of acquiring Wockhardt hospitals. Fortis Healthcare, a hospital chain promoted by former Ranbaxy owners Malvinder Mohan Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh, is close to a major acquisition overseas
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.
The trend has attracted the attention of fund managers who have resumed launching products targeted at HNIs.
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.
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.
Experts see company-specific transactions rather than sector-specific ones in the private equity dealings. More transactions & buyouts will result in PE firms acquiring controlling stakes in firms in 08. The PE activity will be tougher this year as it will be company-driven rather than sector-driven investing. Real estate will continue to be a focus sector followed by infrastructure. Analysts say that PE players bring a lot of value to a firm that is planning to go public.
Dollar fell below 100 yen for the first time in more than 12 years forcing investors to shift money out of dollar assets. Current estimates of money in asset-tracking commodities are about $110-130 billion globally and this is expected to grow by about 30 per cent over the next year.
Equity stake, flexible terms attract talent from Wall Street firms to local peers.
According to data from AMFI (Association of Mutual Funds in India), Rs 12,079 crore (Rs 120.79 billion) came into the new schemes in January alone. In December 2007, inflows were to the tune of Rs 10,273 crore (Rs 102.73 billion).
Most investors have become wary of placing fresh bets after the benchmark Bombay Stock Exchange's Sensex lost more than 3924.19 points, or 19 per cent, this year. The Sensex meltdown has also impacted the number of investments in the growth mode because earnings growth in several sectors has been affected indicating a cooling off effect on the economy.
Corporates are foraying into portfolio management services, with biggies like Reliance Money, Bharti Axa, Tata Capital and others taking the plunge.
Although West Asian investors have been active in India for long using private banks such as UBS, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley that invested across emerging markets, post-9/11, the US has been falling out of favour as investors count the risk that assets in the country could be targeted over security concerns.
Fund houses ape peers' products to lure investors. Popular themes are banked on to attract investors' attention.
VCFs plan to disinvest their IT holdings to ITeS firms and gain from local markets
While the benchmark Sensex recorded 38 per cent gains during 2007, shares of most brokerage houses more than doubled (Geojit Financial increased by 130.68 per cent, while Almondz Global Securities rose 113 per cent) this year.
In spite of a curb on P-notes and markets being generally volatile throughout November, IPOs have bucked the trend by most of them getting listed at a premium. It seems that FIIs have entered more aggressively into primary market after this move.
With the AIM (Alternative Investment Market) becoming increasingly popular as a fund raising destination, Indian companies are flocking to tap the opportunity provided by this sub-market of the LSE.
Sixty out of 154 mutual funds have underperformed their benchmarks by over 30 per cent
The new entrants into the Indian mutual fund industry are making big strides through a plethora of new fund offerings and fixed income schemes as they grow their assets under management at a fast pace. Fund house Lotus Asset Management Company, which was launched just a year ago, has seen its assets grow from Rs 6,385.86 crore (Rs 63.85 billion) to Rs 8,142.93 crore (Rs 81.42 billion) in October, a steep rise of 27.5 per cent.
This comes on the back of impressive performance in infrastructure stocks in 2006 and in the first seven months of this calendar.
The ministry of corporate affairs (earlier company affairs) is amending the stringent IDR (Indian depository receipts) regulations to make it easier for foreign companies to list here.
India Inc created a new record by mobilising Rs 24,993 crore (Rs 249.93 billion) in FY06-07, which is higher by as much as 5 per cent compared with the previous year's Rs 23,676 crore (Rs 236.76 billion).
A majority of brokerages expect the bellwether Sensex to hover at 19,000 by the end of this calendar year, according to a poll conducted by Business Standard among top local brokerage houses. The figure is significantly lower than last December when most brokerages had expected a 15 to 20 per cent return from 20,000 levels at the end of 2007. The Sensex has dropped over 25 per cent from its January peak of 20,800.
Lower price-earnings ratio, big IPOs attract players.
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