After parting ways with Nimesh Kampani-owned JM Financial Group, Morgan Stanley asset management company (AMC) is mulling expansion of its mutual fund (MF) business in India by launching two schemes by the year-end.
The company has already filed an offer document with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in this regard.
?The schemes are slated for launch in December,? said Narayan Ramachandran, CEO of Morgan Stanley.
The company will launch two open-ended funds ? Morgan Stanley Liquid Fund and Across Capitalisation Equity fund.
Ramachandran said, “Our joint venture did not include the asset management business. We plan to launch these new schemes as part of our AMC business.” He, however, declined to reveal details about the schemes.
Morgan Stanley presently offers one fund ? Morgan Stanley Growth Fund ? to the country?s investors.
The scheme, launched in January 1994, has given 29.97% return in the last one year and manages assets worth Rs 3,404.24 crore. This scheme has around 16.34% holdings in shares of technology companies, 15.36% in engineering firms and 12.73% in shares of companies in the financial sector.
According to the offer document filed with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), Morgan Stanley Liquid Fund will invest its entire corpus in highly-liquid money market securities. It has a provision to deploy up to 50% of the corpus in securitised bonds. The equity fund on the other hand will invest 65-100% of its corpus in equity and equity-related securities. It can maintain up to 35% exposure to debt and money market instruments.
In February this year, Morgan Stanley split its 10-year alliance with JM Financial. Morgan Stanley paid $ 425 million to take control of the joint venture’s institutional equity sales, trading and research system, while selling its stake in the investment banking business.
