| The fund actually paid out Rs 2,900 crore dividends between February 2003 and March 2005. D S R Murty, executive director of UTI Mutual, said, "We are here for the investors and it is their money that has appreciated." |
| Last year saw an unprecedented rush to declare dividends by almost all schemes of UTI Mutual. The payout of dividends escalated from the second half of the financial year onwards and gained momentum after the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex crossed 5000 levels. |
| Dividends declared by the fund ranged from a minimum of 12 per cent to as much as 50 per cent in some cases. Last year saw UTI Mutual's sectoral funds such as the MNC Fund, the Pharma Fund, the Petro Fund, and the Software Fund offer dividends of around 25 to 30 per cent. |
| This also created a big rush of investors. As a result, for the year ended on March 31, 2005, the assets under management of UTI Mutual were close to Rs 21,000 crore, around Rs 4,000 crore more than its nearest competitor. |
| With eight million investors, around 65 per cent of the total investor base in the mutual fund sector are invested with UTI Mutual. |
| Meanwhile, after a long time the fund house is launching a Dividend Yield Fund, where bulk of the investment would be made in high dividend yield stocks that would be identified on the basis of business fundamentals, management competence, growth prospects and industry scenario. |
| A K Sridhar, executive director and chief investment officer, said based on previous track record their job would be also to anticipate the kind of dividends that a company is liable to pay out and then make their investment decisions. |
| The total investment universe would be from around 75 stocks, while at any point of time the scheme will have between 65 to 70 stocks in its portfolio. The benchmark index is the BSE 100. The scheme will open on April 11 and close on May 3, 2005. |
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