Maiden Dividend Under Birla Infrastructure Fund

Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund has announced a maiden dividend of 10 % under the dividend option of Birla Infrastructure Fund.

The record date of this dividend would be March 24, 2008.

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40% Dividend in ABN Amro Opportunities

ABN AMRO Mutual Fund has declared a 40 % dividend (i.e. Rs. 4.00 per unit on the face value of Rs. 10/- per unit) under the dividend option of ABN AMRO Opportunities Fund. The record date for the same has been fixed as March 25, 2008.

This is the third dividend payout from the fund. Earlier, it had announced a 25% dividend in March 2006 and a 45% dividend in September 2007.

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400% Dividend in Principal Personal Tax Saver

Principal Mutual Fund has declared a dividend of 400 % (i.e. Rs. 40/- per unit on the face value Rs. 10/- each) under Principal Personal Tax Saver Fund. The record date for the same would be March 25, 2008.

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200 % Dividend under Birla Sunlife Tax Relief 96 Fund

Birla Sunlife Mutual Fund has declared a dividend of 200% (i.e. Rs. 20/- per unit on face value of Rs.10/-per unit) under the dividend option of Birla Sunlife Tax Relief 96 fund. The record date for the same would be March 25, 2008.

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Growing Principle

Rajat Jain is an old hand at fund management. In his 18 years of experience, he has worked in various capacities including fund manager and head of research. Currently he holds charge of two funds-Principal Global Opportunities and Principal Resurgent India Equity. A mechanical engineer by education, he knows the nuts and bolts of the markets well.

How does Principal Global Opportunities Fund work?
The fund was launched in April 2004. It was the first fund to offer an opportunity to Indian investors to invest outside India. At that time the regulations permitted a very restricted investment universe. So our list was very limiting. But that changed in August 2006 when the regulations were liberalised. Then we repositioned the fund as a feeder fund that feeds into Principals Emerging Markets Fund. Principal manages over $6 billion in emerging market equity assets.

What is the Emerging Markets Fund investing strategy?
Principal group uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative analysis in its stock picking. They are bottom-up stock selectors. The fund takes no cash calls.

The benchmark is MSCI Emerging Markets. Principal Global Investors, which is managing the emerging markets fund, do not take major calls on either a sector or a country. They are bottom up stock selectors. As part of risk control, they take controlled exposures to individual stocks, countries and sectors vis-à-vis the benchmark. They will have limited divergence vis-à-vis the benchmark. But within that, they will go for the best stocks in respective countries or sectors. They will pick the best stocks in a sector across countries.

So despite controlled sector and country calls, the coverage ratio of the fund is 35-40 per cent. This translates into around 60 per cent of the stocks adding alpha. So it is a very stock specific strategy. No country or sector call, but rather stock calls. So, in a manner of speaking, they may not hit many home runs, but hit multiple singles i.e. they take multiple small bets rather than few big bets.

Does it have any India allocation?
No. It is an offshore fund, i.e. the fund is fully invested in the Principal Emerging Markets Fund.

Other than your tax saving fund which has done very well recently, why have your equity funds not done too well?
Our equity funds have done well. In the last two years the performance of our equity funds has been very strong and they are among top quartile in different categories.

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