Mumbai, Feb 12: ING Asset Management, a part of ING Bank, has decided to float a mutual fund in the country in the next couple of months. In another significant development, the bank has decided not to sell off its membership cards of the National and Bombay stock exchanges, suggesting that this might well be a temporary closure. This could also suggest that the firm might enter into a joint venture with a domestic outfit.According to top exchange sources, senior ING Baring officials visited both NSE and BSE on Thursday and informed them that they did not wish to sell off their cards.
"They have told us that they are only shutting down temporarily and hence would like to remain inactive till such time they decide to come back to the market. We have acceded to their demand and allowed them to remain inactive till they want to," said a top NSE official.
When contacted, ING Bank's chief executive officer, India, SD Nayyar, declined to comment on the decision of not selling the membership cards of the twoexchanges. "All we can say is that we have decided not to close down permanently in India. We will, however, settle every trade that has been carried out by us in the interim," he said.
Nayyar added that the bank was committed to India and for this reason it has decided to launch its mutual fund in India in the next couple of months if the market is conducive for the same. "We have already set up a joint venture asset management company in India and have received government approval for the same. We had, however, not launched the fund till now due to the bad market conditions. The group has, however, taken a relook at the issue and we feel that we should be able to launch the fund in the next two months or so," said Nayyar. ING Bank also has a private equity fund in India which has been dormant since inception.
A high-level delegation from the bank is expected to visit the country next week to formalise the structure of the mutual fund."The move to shut down the broking business is not an indication oflack of any commitment by the bank towards India. In fact, we are upgrading our Delhi representative office into a full-fledged branch office," said Nayyar.
He admitted that the GDR issue management mandates would be hard to come by now since the research wing of the bank has been shut down as well. "We would however continue to lay tremendous focus on our mergers and acquisitions business as well as debt capital market business," said Nayyar. Nayyar said that the corporate finance division would be merged with the bank. He clarified that about 15 employees of the broking and research outfit had been retrenched out of a total staff strength of 120 of the bank.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
