20/04/2012
NGAM preparing an Indian equity fund with IDFC AM
Pierre Servant, CEO of Natixis Global Asset Management (NGAM), has told Newsmanagers and L’Agefi Hebdo that a Luxembourg-registered Indian equity fund is expected to be launched next month. The Natixis IDFC India Equity fund has already been licensed by the CSSF, but is still awaiting approval by the Indian regulator (SEBI).The product will be managed by the Indian firm IDFC Asset Management Company (IDFC AMC, USD5.5bn in assets as of the end of March), in which the French group has acquired a stake of 25% (see Newsmanagers of 20 December 2010 and 9 December 2011).Naval Bir Kumar, CEO of the Indian firm, on a visit to Paris, states that the new fund will be a “core India” product, whose benchmark index will be the MSCI India, but which will be allowed to invest up to 35% of its assets outside this index. “It will have a pure alpha straegy, and will replicate the dummy portfolio which we have been working with for a year, and which would have outperformed the MSCI India index by 350 basis points if it had been operational. There is no capacity constraint, as the fund is 70% composed of large caps (the average cap size of companies in the portfolio is between USD4bn and USD5bn). And it is a conviction-based fund, with only 40 holdings. I add that currency risks will not be hedged in the standard share class, but we may create custom hedging via a special share class,” the manager says.