New Funds See Record Collections

Booming equity markets have enabled mutual funds to collect a record sum in new fund offerings (NFOs) in this calendar year.

Fund houses collected in excess of Rs 27,500 crore in 2007, with several ongoing or just-concluded equity-oriented NFOs yet to announce their collection figures.

The money mopped up through NFOs last year was Rs 28,969.76 crore. Infrastructure and global funds hogged the limelight this year, with funds such as SBI Infrastructure Fund Series-1 (Rs 2,536 crore), Fidelity International Opportunities (Rs 1,557 crore), ICICI Prudential Indo Asia Equity Fund (Rs 1,000.72 crore) and Tata Indo Global Infrastructure (Rs 2,200 crore).

It is believed that the infrastructure theme will continue to dominate the fund market in the coming year. In fact, HDFC Mutual Fund has filed the draft offer document for its infrastructure fund with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).

Tata Mutual Fund, which has already raised a global infrastructure fund, has also filed with the regulator for the Growing Economies Infrastructure Fund. NFOs by fund houses that have a good track record ruled the roost this year.

Reliance Long-Term Equity (Rs 2,091.62 crore), Franklin India High Growth Companies (Rs 1,515 crore) in 2007 and UTI Leadership Equity (Rs 2,080 crore) in 2006, among others.

Funds investing overseas were popular too and that trend is likely to continue with new entrant Mirae AMCs Asia-Pacific Opportunities Fund, ABN Amro China Equity Fund and even the Principals Global Real Estate Fund filing their documents with Sebi.