Birla Sun Life, Canara Robeco, LIC Nomura, DSP Blackrock and SBI have come out with eight new equity fund offers.
Buoyed by the healthy inflows in equity funds and steady rise of equity folios since May, the mutual fund industry is trying to attract investors through NFOs. AMFI data shows that fund houses have collected over Rs.8,000 crore from NFOs in the current calendar year.
Five fund houses – Birla Sun Life, Canara Robeco, LIC Nomura, DSP BlackRock and SBI have come out with eight new equity funds. Of the eight, one is an ELSS, one RGESS, two open end equity savings funds and rest are closed end equity funds.
ELSS
SBI has launched a ten year close ended ELSS called SBI Long Term Advantage Fund – Series I. The NFO of the fund is currently open for subscription and closes on January 31. The scheme aims to generate capital appreciation by investing predominantly in equity and equity related instruments. The fund will be benchmarked against S&P BSE 500 Index. Dharmendra Grover is the fund manager of the scheme.
RGESS
Birla Sun Life has launched fourth series of its RGESS Fund called Birla Sun Life Focused Equity Fund Series 4. The fund houses has collected close to Rs. 120 crore from first three series of this fund. Benchmarked against CNX 100, Birla Sun Life Focused Equity Fund – Series 3 aims to invest in companies from BSE 100, CNX 100 and PSU Navratnas, Maharatnas and Miniratnas (RGESS eligible securities). Anil Shah will manage the fund.
Open end equity scheme
ICICI Prudential and Birla Sun Life have come out with new breed of equity funds called equity savings fund which can dabble in arbitrage, equities and debt market to provide equity like tax status to investors. Both ICICI Prudential Equity Income Fund and Birla Sun Life Equity Savings Scheme are open for subscription and closes on December 2 and November 25 respectively.These schemes seek to provide capital appreciation and income distribution by investing its corpus in a blend of unhedged equity derivatives, arbitrage opportunities and debt instruments.
Close end equity scheme
Four fund houses - Birla Sun Life, SBI, DSP BlackRock, LIC Nomura and Canara Robeco have come out with the NFOs of close end equity funds.
In its first close ended equity fund of this season, Canara Robeco Mutual Fund has launched Canara Robeco India Opportunities Fund (3 years). The NFO of the scheme is open for subscription till November 28. This scheme aims to generate long term capital appreciation by investing predominantly in equity and equity related securities of listed companies. Like most other closed end funds which are betting on small and mid-cap stocks, this fund will invest 65% of its assets in mid and small cap stocks, 10% in large cap, up to 5% in micro-cap and up to 25% in debt.
Similarly, DSP BlackRock Mutual Fund has jumped on to the closed end fund launch bandwagon. The fund house launched a close ended equity fund called DSP BlackRock 3 Years Close Ended Equity Fund. Benchmarked against CNX 500 Index, the scheme will have a concentrated portfolio and invest primarily in the equity and equity related securities of companies and which are valued at a reasonable price. The scheme will be co-managed by Vinit Sambre and Laukik Bagwe.
Meanwhile, SBI Mutual Fund has launched its 3 year close end equity scheme called SBI Equity Opportunities Fund – Series II. The NFO of the scheme is currently open for subscription and closes on December 01. The scheme aims to generate capital appreciation by investing in a portfolio of equity and equity related instruments.The scheme will be benchmarked against S&P BSE 500. Dharmendra Grover is the fund manager of the scheme.
LIC Nomura Mutual Fund too has launched an 1100 days close ended equity fund called LIC Nomura MF Diversified Equity Fund-Series 2. The NFO is currently open for subscription and closes on November 24.The benchmark of the scheme is S&P BSE 200 Index. The fund will be co-managed by Ramnath Venkateswaran and Nobutaka Kitajima.
The trend of close end funds started last year with IDFC’s Equity Opportunities Fund. Most of these close end funds launched recently by fund houses have a bias towards mid and small cap sectors. Recently, UTI Focused Equity Fund collected Rs. 770 crore during its NFO, becoming the highest grosser in the closed end equity fund category.
