MF assets fall Rs 5780 cr in 2 months

Heavy redemption by institutional investors witnessed in liquid schemes

The assets under management (AUM) of the domestic mutual fund industry has declined by Rs 5,780 crore in the last two months.

The AUM declined by Rs 3,566 crore in September 2004, while it slipped by Rs 2,214 crore in August.

A scrutiny of the outflows pattern suggests that the fall in AUM was due to redemption by institutional investors in liquid schemes.

The provisional AUM data available on the Association of Mutual Fund in India (AMFI) website show the assets of 27 mutual funds totalled Rs 1,52,071 crore as on September 30, 2004, as compared with Rs 1,55,638 crore at the end of August 2004.

Reliance Mutual Fund topped the list of losers, with its AUM declining by 1,554 crore. Prudential ICICI Mutual ranked second with an AUM decline of Rs 945 crore.

The AUM of HDFC Mutual Fund declined by Rs 612 crore, Kotak Mahindra Mutual Fund's AUM dipped by Rs 418 crore, Alliance Mutual Fund reported a fall of Rs 313 crore, Birla Sun Life down Rs 309 crore and Principal Mutual Fund down Rs 283 crore.

While 14 fund houses showed a decline in AUM aggregating Rs 4,757 crore, as many as 12 funds have increased their assets by Rs 1,508 crore.

The HSBC Mutual Fund tops the gainers' list with an AUM gain of Rs 356 crore, followed by Tata Mutual Fund up Rs 316 crore, SBI Mutual Fund up Rs 322 crore, Templeton up Rs 173 crore, J M Mutual Fund up Rs 138 crore, ING Vysya up Rs 128 crore and DSP Merrill Lynch up Rs 105 crore.

New entrant ABN Amro Mutual Fund has accumulated assets of Rs 1,533 crore spread over 20 equity and debt schemes. ABN Amro's equity corpus aggregated Rs 366 crore, while the remaining Rs 1,167 crore was in debt schemes.

Its two institutional plans attracted Rs 645 crore in investment, while five floating rate schemes had a total corpus of Rs 272 crore. Its six flexi-debt schemes collected sums aggregating Rs 213 crore.

Reliance Mutual Fund, the top loser in AUM, was hit badly on account of redemption pressure in its liquid plan.

Reliance Liquid Fund Institutional Plan-growth option reported a Rs 2,400 crore redemption in September.

The corpus of the scheme declined from Rs 4,466 crore on August 31 to Rs 2,048 crore on September 30. The redemption pressure saw Reliance Mutual Fund's AUM declining from Rs 11,570 crore in August to Rs 10,015 crore at the end of September.

Prudential ICICI Mutual Fund also saw redemption pressure in its liquid plan Institutional Plus, Dividend Institutional Plus-weekly and Floating Rate Plan-growth option.

The fund's assets base slipped from Rs 15,924 crore to Rs 14,979 crore. The assets of HDFC Mutual Fund declined by Rs 612 crore, with redemption pressure in its schemes such as Liquid Fund Premium Plus, cash management and others.

Meanwhile, the UTI Mutual Fund heads the domestic mutual fund industry league tables with an asset base of Rs 20,224 core at the end of September 2004.

Templeton ranked second, with assets of Rs 18,493 crore. HDFC Mutual Fund moved up the ladder to the third spot from 4th place in August.

Prudential ICICI Mutual Fund slipped from the 3rd position to the 4th slot. Reliance Mutual Fund stayed unchanged at the 5th position.