Birla Sun to get nod for broking arm hive off soon

Birla Sun Life Financial Services, a joint venture between the Aditya Birla group and Sun Life of Canada, has received approvals from the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and is awaiting the Securities & Exchange Board of India (Sebi) permission to hive off its stock broking company, Birla Sun Life Securities.

S K Mitra, director, Birla Sun Life Financial Services, said that the Sebi approval is expected within a fortnight. The clearances from BSE and NSE are required as the stock broking company is listed at the two bourses.

The proposed move to sell Birla Sun Life Securities is in line with the promoters' decision to pull out of stock broking business as it did not come under core area of activities. An NRI group has struck a deal with Birla Sun Life Financial to acquire Birla Sun Life Securities for an undisclosed amount, market sources said.

The acquisition of Birla Sun Life Securities will provide the NRI business house, which has been around since 1995, an opportunity to offer equity and fixed income broking and research services to local and foreign institutions and high net worth private clients.

Birla Sun Life Securities has given promoters high returns. For the past two years, the promoters received 45 per cent dividend from the company.

Alongside, Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund intends to launch a monthly income plan (MIP). The fund will have two variants, one each for retail clients and corporate customers, having different exposure plan to equity markets.

The scheme had been originally branded Birla MIP Gold. Sebi, however, objected to the inclusion of "Gold" in the name. As a result, the scheme may be called Birla MIP Plus.

The market regulator has been keeping a watch on names being used to launch funds to ensure that retail investors were not misguided. It recently prevented J M Mutual Fund from branding its MIP scheme as JM Momentum.

Sebi rejected Pru-ICICI's proposal to brand a product as Dequity. Later, the product, a regular MIP with higher equity exposure, was called Income Multiplier.