Meet the <I>BS</I> Fund Managers of the Year

In a year of weak domestic growth, global uncertainties and a tight monetary environment, managing money wasn't an easy task, but fund managers at Franklin Templeton Investments, India walked away with the Business Standard Fund Manager of the Year awards in both equity and debt categories.

Beating their peers and benchmarks in their respective categories, R Janakiraman and Roshi Jain topped the equity category, while Santosh Kamath and Kunal Agrawal led the debt category. They stood out due to their investment strategies, their conviction (including patience) as well as their ability to gauge the impact of events that others may have not spotted.

For instance, the buy-and-hold investing style for Franklin Templeton's equity fund managers Janakiraman and Jain borders on indifference to external events. Despite the roller-coaster ride of the broader markets in the past three years, the key equity portfolios have not been much different. The reason, according to Janakiraman, is the bottom-up approach with a focus on identifying good quality stocks that compound over the long- term or companies which can consistently generate strong earnings growth.

Santosh Kamath (left) and Kunal Agrawal of Franklin Templeton Investments, India

For debt fund managers Kamath and Agrawal, one of the characteristics that differentiates them is their ability to read macroeconomic variables, especially global events and their impact on rates. When things improved on the fiscal, current account, oil and currency fronts, indicating a benign interest rate story for other market participants, they focused on how emerging market currencies were falling the world over, and how it would limit the central bank's leeway to cut rates.

"Yields had come down and the view was that rates will be cut continuously, but we realised that within the macroeconomy, the currency part was changing. We realised that currency was the key," says Kamath. This helped the fund get a better handle on how rates could move.

The winners were decided by a distinguished jury led by G N Bajpai, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India. The others in the jury were Vibhav Kapoor, director & group CIO, IL&FS, Pradip Shah, chairman, IndAsia Fund Advisors and Ashvin Parekh, managing partner, APAS LLP.

The details of the jury meeting, the investment philosophy of the Fund Managers of the Year and a panel discussion of seven leading mutual fund CEOs have been published in a special 20-page pullout being distributed free with Wednesday's edition.