Sebi investor rule to hit 21 funds

The Securities and Exchange Board of India's (Sebi) diktat to mutual funds to regularise schemes that have just one or a handful of investors is going to hit at least 21 of them.

On September 30, 2003, these 21 funds had around 92 schemes where a single investor or at most a handful of investors contributed to their entire corpus.

According to data culled by the Business Standard Research Bureau from fact sheets published by mutual funds, even public sector funds have schemes catering largely to single investors or where a single investor holds more than 25 per cent of the corpus. This includes the SBI Mutual Fund, which had nine such schemes in operation in September 2003.

The UTI Mutual Fund had three such schemes, Bank of Baroda Mutual Fund six and Canara Bank Mutual Fund 11.

But Prudential ICICI Mutual Fund has the largest number of such schemes so far, 17. In 10 of Cholamandalam Asset Management's schemes, a single investor held more than 25 per cent of the portfolio.

In another 10 schemes, a single investor holds 100 per cent of the corpus, though it is not clear who or what this single investor is.

This includes the Gilt Series, Liquid Cumulative and Liquid 2006 schemes from Cholamandalam Mutual Fund, Fixed Maturity Plan-Yearly Series-6 from Prudential ICICI, Fixed Term and Capital scheme from ING Vysya, Select Debt-5 from Sundaram Mutual Fund and Yearly Fixed Monthly Plan-4 from Sun F&C.

The Sebi circular issued on Friday said any scheme or plan issued in future should have a minimum of 20 investors and no investor could hold more than 25 per cent of the portfolio.

Existing schemes have been given three months to comply with the requirement. Sebi said if the mutual funds failed to comply with the deadline, they would be wound up.

The new fixed maturity plans to be launched will have to comply with the requirement, but existing ones have been exempted "considering the nature of the schemes and in the interests of the investors".