| This may have been a distant dream for small retail investors till now. But, things will soon change with Sundaram BNP Paribas Mutual, the Chennai-headquartered fund house, 49.9 per cent owned by France's BNP Paribas, planning to offer local investors precisely this "� an exposure into emerging market stocks, global real estate and global commodities, all through a single product. |
| While the scheme plans to buy into stocks in various emerging markets more or less directly, its exposure to global real-estate and commodities will be through international exchange traded funds (ETFs) in the two asset classes, said Sanjay Santhanam, vice-president (sales & marketing) of Sundaram BNP Paribas Mutual. |
| As per the rules, domestic fund houses are allowed to take an exposure upto $4 billion for international products. The individual cap set for fund houses is $250 million. |
| Currently, only PNB Principal AMC offers a 100 per cent international equity product, while Franklin Templeton's similar product takes exposure partly in overseas equities. |
| Recently, Fidelity launched a scheme where 35 per cent of the corpus will be invested in foreign equities. Other fund houses including UTI Mutual Fund plan international equity schemes, but none offers a combination of three asset classes in a single product. |
| Santhanam said Sundaram BNP Paribas will use the expertise of FundQuest, a multi-management partner of BNP Paribas, for investments in real-estate and commodities ETFs across the globe. |
| "We are expecting an approval from Securities and Exchange Board of India. We hope to launch the product by the end of this month," he said. |
| Sundaram BNP Paribas is targeting a corpus size of $250 million for the new product, within a short period of time, after the New Fund Offer. |
| "Investors will have to look for diversification and an international exposure will be ideal route for spreading one's investments," Santhanam said. |
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