Korea's Mirae Asset gets Sebi nod for MF entry

Korea's independent financial services provider, Mirae Asset, has received the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) licence to start mutual fund operations in India.

Buoyed by the Sebi nod, the asset management company (AMC) today announced plans to launch 6-8 equity products and 3-4 fixed income products in the next 16-18 months.

Arindam Ghosh, CEO, Mirae Asset Global Investment Management (India), also did not rule out the possibility of launching a fund investing in global equities, saying the AMC has a slew of international products that can be tweaked for introduction in the Indian market.

Gopal Agarwal will head the equity side and Murthy Nagaraj will be the head of fixed income at Mirae Asset Management. "At present, we have three additional portfolio managers for equity products and two for fixed income.

We plan to scale up the investment team to ten members,"said Ghosh.

The AMC will file the draft offer document with Sebi this week for its first product offering, which is likely to be an equity product.

"Initially, we plan to start with mutual fund operations and later enter other financial streams. We are in talks with not just nationalised banks but also other banks that have a larger regional presence to enter into tie-ups for the distribution of our products,"added Ghosh.

Mirae Asset, which set up a wholly owned subsidiary in India last year, will infuse $50 million as seed capital. The AMC filed for Sebi approval in the first quarter of FY07 and is likely to roll out product offerings from January 2008.

Mirae Asset financial group has assets under management of over $130 billion as on October 31 and currently has more than 284 offshore funds including 5 India-dedicated funds that have invested close $3 billion in the Indian markets.