Page 14 - Banking Finance November 2021

MUTUAL FUND

Mutual Fund

News

Sebi issues guidelines for The regulator said prior approval for when equity markets go up substan-
personal investment transactions tially and vice-versa.
trading and investment by should be obtained by senior execu-

AMC employees tives. Sebi puts in place guiding
Sebi has barred senior employees and principles for bringing uni-
directors of asset management com- SBI Balanced Advantage
panies and their trustees from buying Fund AUM crosses Rs formity in mutual fund
or selling mutual fund units while hav- benchmarks
ing access to any non-public informa- 20,000 crore in less than 3- To standardise and bring uniformity to
tion, such as winding up of schemes. months the benchmarks of mutual fund
The move comes in the wake of the SBI Mutual Fund's newly launched Bal- schemes, Sebi came out with a two-
Franklin Templeton episode where Sebi anced Advantage Fund has garnered tiered structure for benchmarking cer-
observed some senior officials, direc- record inflows worth Rs 20,000 crore. tain categories of schemes.
tors of the asset manager and its This huge AUM has come into the fund The first tier benchmark will be reflec-
trustee company redeemed their in- in less than three months since the tive of the category of the scheme, and
vestments ahead of the winding up of NFO was launched in August. the second tier benchmark will be de-
the six debt funds.
The fund house said that the new fund monstrative of the investment style/
The regulator said in a circular that has got almost 65% inflows from tier strategy of the fund manager within
senior executives should refrain from II & III retail investors while the re- the category, Sebi said in a circular.
purchase or sale of mutual fund units, maining from the top 8 cities. All the benchmarks followed should
where any information available to the SBI BAF raised the highest ever AUM necessarily be Total Return Indices, it
mutual fund--which could materially
for an NFO in the mutual fund industry added.
impact the NAV (net asset value) or in August this year. The fund house also
interest of unitholders-- is not yet com- said that through this NFO, it has Kotak Mahindra AMC gets
municated to the unitholders. It said reached out to 93% pin-code across
scenarios such as a change in the in- the country with close to 4 lakh appli- relief from SAT
vestment objectives of the concerned The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT)
cations across India and added 1 lakh
mutual fund scheme, restrictions on has partly stayed a Sebi order, which
new PANs.
redemptions, winding up of schemes, had directed Kotak Mahindra Asset
material change in the liquidity posi- The SBI Balanced Advantage Fund is a Management Company to refund a
tion and default in the underlying se- regular dynamic asset allocation part of the investment management
curities is material to the concerned scheme. The fund automatically shifts and advisory fees collected by the fund
mutual fund scheme. from equities to debt instruments house from the unit holders. In addi-

14 | 2021 | NOVEMBER | BANKING FINANCE