Franklin Templeton Investments has reduced its exposure to Jindal Steel and Power (JSPL) by about half between January and February. While the fund house had a collective exposure of around R1,588.8 crore to the Naveen Jindal-promoted firm in the form of debt paper, this has been pruned to R728.9 crore, data from disclosures on the fund’s website shows.
The development is interesting since following a downgrade of JSPL’s paper by rating agency Crisil on February 15, the fund house had on February16, in a note to distributors, said many of the problems currently being faced by JSPL are temporary in nature.
“JSPL has strong relationships with banks, with the banks having an exposure of approximately R37,000 crore on the group (JSPL and its subsidiaries),” Franklin Templeton wrote.
