Portfolio investors are positive on the India structural story. Foreign fund managers from GIC, Boston-based Mass Financial.      Singapore-based Aberdeen Asset Management and Fidelity, which were recently in India, have indicated that they are looking for the right opportunities to match their India allocation.
Many have gone back to say that they are considering raising their India allocation, said a senior strategist at the India arm of a foreign brokerage. However, how soon this will translate into incremental flows will be difficult to say, he added. The big fear so far had been that if the US raised interest rates, money would flow out of emerging markets, including India. After the Federal Reserve statement on keeping interest rates low, this is unlikely and viewed as a definite positive for fund inflows. While most of these funds have been invested in India, with sufficiently large India portfolios, a few names such as that of the US-based pension fund TIAA-CREF are also doing the rounds. TIAA-CREF has been invested in India for more than a decade. The fund is said to be taking a relook at India. However, equity analysts are concerned that a rise in interest rates by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to contain inflationary expectations could act as a dampener and lead to some of these funds adopting a wait-and-see attitude. Also, with a large tranche of Greece’s debt across various maturities coming up for expiry in April, Europe still remains a concern. “We are very bullish on India over the medium-to-long term. While we are currently overweight on India, we may consider raising India allocations over the year, depending on how the next few months play out,” said Sam Mahtani, director, emerging market equities, at the London-based F&C Asset Management. “Our key high conviction stock ideas include Jindal Steel and Power, Ranbaxy and Axis Bank,’’ he added. F&C has a $ 2.5-billion emerging market portfolio, with India’s share of the pie being $350 million. While the India portfolio is a diversified one, the four key themes include pharma, IT, financial services, and metals and mining. Foreign institutional investors, or FIIs, have been net buyers of more than $3.2 billion of Indian stocks as on March 22. On a net basis bought $3 billion of shares in March alone. ndia has a 0.96% weightage in the overall MSCI (World) universe compared to China, which has a 2.26% weightage. The MSCI India market cap is $233 billion vis-à-vis India’s market cap, which stands at $1.3 trillion. Interestingly, most portfolio investors are underweight on China.

The overall MSCI (World) universe on February 26, 2010, stood at $24.1 trillion, with 87.3% of it being the MSCI developed world and 12.7% the MSCI emerging world. The stance of institutional investors over the past few months has been one of cautious optimism. After the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting this month, investors have moved from being risk-averse to a more neutral zone on emerging markets and India.

The perception is that while global liquidity will continue to determine future flows, India is holding out much better than the fundamentals warrant. Currently, most FIIs are marginally overweight on India.

Source-http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/market-news/Foreign-funds-hint-at-hiking-India-allocation/articleshow/5720546.cms

                                                                                                                                                                       ET Bureau

A growing number of investors are turning to wealth managers to decide where to invest their money to generate a decent inflation-adjusted return. Assuming that an investor has put Rs 1,000 in the stock market for 10 years, yielding an average annual return of 15%, his investment would have multiplied to Rs 4,045 at the end of 10 years. However, taking into account a nominal inflation rate of 10%, the real rate of return would only be an average of 5%. Thus, after adjusting for inflation, the absolute value of his investments at the end of 10 years will only be Rs 1,628. “So far, a lot of clients were not sensitised to comparing inflation rates and investment returns and tend to largely focus on nominal returns. However, as the high inflation rate continues to make headlines, investors are becoming more worried over how to generate inflation-adjusted returns from their investments,” says Hrishi Parandekar, CEO, Karvy Private Wealth. While equities and gold figure at the top of the list, many wealth managers are telling investors to allocate a part of their funds into long-term private equity (PE) and real estate assets. Over the past one year, the prices of essential commodities have more than doubled along with the escalating cost of services and education. This has forced many whose income have not kept pace with the increase in prices to dip into their savings to meet major expenses.

Says Sanjay Kumar Maheshka, MD & CEO and member, group corporate strategy, Prabhudas Lilladher Fund Advisors, “The returns are not linked to inflation strictly, but also to other things such as global factors. Returns during financial year 2009 have been bad, the returns in general in the past five years have been far in excess of inflation adjustment.”
Most of the advisors assume a nominal annual inflation rate of 5-6% for working out a long-term plan of their clients’ finances. The wholesale price index (WPI) in India was at a 16-month high at 9.89% in February.

Mr Maheshka says that he expects inflation to fall in the next six months. “We still recommend equities and balanced funds as major asset classes for the investor with a medium-to-long-term perspective. In the short term, a correction in the equity market cannot be ruled out.”Mr Parandekar reckons that the best way to beat inflation will be to take an exposure to equities which, in the Indian scenario, is fundamentally driven by macro-economic growth.

Source-http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/personal-finance/savings-centre/savings-news/Investors-turn-to-wealth-managers-for-best-bets/articleshow/5720492.cms

                                                                                                                       Apurv Gupta & ShaileshMenon               

Navin Oberoi, a retired businessman, lost his life's savings -- more than Rs 70 lakh -- in a supposed invest- ment scheme that promised lucrative returns on his capital.All of us fell for their trick.
The office was bursting at its seams with people bringing in bags full of money, thinking their currency would get tripled.
There were teller machines and currency notes were being cal- culated,“ said the harrowed looking 62-year-old.Oberoi is one of the 500-odd Delhiites who were allegedly cheated by a financial firm -- City Limouzines India Limited --and its sister concerns to the tune of crores of rupees.The bait was simple. On an investment of Rs 1.3 lakh, a return of Rs 7,000 was prom- ised per month for the next five years and after that Rs 70,000 of the principal amount would be refunded.Perhaps, it is desperation because of the spiralling infla- tion. In 2009, more than 75,000 middle class Delhiites lost at least Rs 400 crore of their hard- earned savings to cheats who promised them higher returns on investments in the year, records available with the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Delhi Police say.“It sounded lucrative. I even sold one of my cars to invest in the company,“ said Oberoi who reportedly did his homework before investing in the scheme.“I visited their office in Nehru Place and checked with other investors personally. I invested in March last year and for a few months I received the returns,“ said Oberoi.“In August, 2009 the cheques started bouncing. The compa- ny was locked out and I lost all my savings,“ he added.The Mumbai Police recently arrested the owner of the com- pany, identified as S.M. Masood.Masood had floated the com- pany in 1995 and initially used it to lease out taxis.Soon several branches popped up across the country, promising people higher returns on their investments.Investigations have revealed that Masood allegedly owns a fleet of cars, several plots of lands, resorts and has even invested in Bollywood movies with the money he extracted from people.The office was being run from Suite number 505, International Trade Towers in Nehru Place.“The publicity of the company was through word of mouth and they had even published lucrative brochures,“ said Ravi Puri, another duped investor.

“There are a lot of retired people out there who invested the money in this company,“ he added.He had hired MBAs to lure investors. He even has connec- tions with politicians and before his arrest was living in a five- star hotel in Delhi.The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) said that so far they have received more than 500 complaints against the company.

Source-http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/ArticleText.aspx?article=25_03_2010_003_009&kword=&mode=1

                                                                                                                                                                     Vijaita Singh

Shaheed Bhagat Singh's native village, Khatkar Kalan in Nawanshahr and Hussainiwala Border(Place of Cremation) remembered the heroic martyr on his martyrdum Day-23rd March 2010.

The country’s largest car maker Maruti Suzuki India Ltd on Tuesday rolled out its 1 millionth (10 lakh) car in this financial year, making it the first domestic carmaker to do so.

With a gamut of global car manufacturers eyeing a pie out of Maruti’s over 50 per cent market share in India, the company has set a rather steep target to double its production to 2 million units in the next five years. It took 26 years for Maruti to reach 1 million capacity from 843 cars in 1983-84. 

As a sign of the changing times, the millionth car was not the M800, which kick started its journey, but the Swift, which has acted as a catalyst in its growth in the last five years.

Around 15 global carmakers have a production capacity of more than 1 million per annum.

“Since 1983, when we produced our first Maruti 800, we have so far produced 8.8 million (88 lakh) cars,” said Osamu Suzuki, chairman, Suzuki Motor Corporation, which holds 54 per cent in Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. “In this journey, not everything has come smoothly and not all moments have been happy. I would say 50 per cent were happy and 50 per cent were sad.”

Maruti announced a fresh investment of Rs 1,700 crore towards opening a new plant at Manesar, its fifth in the country, with an annual capacity of 2.5 lakh units. The plant will be operational by 2012 and will take the carmaker’s overall capacity to over 12.5 lakh per annum.  

The company also announced investment worth Rs 2,500 crore for research and development activities and expansion of engine manufacturing.

“All world class manufacturers are coming to India and there is severe competition,” Suzuki said. Taking this (production) to 2 million is going to be a tough journey.”

Source-http://www.hindustantimes.com/26-yrs-on-Maruti-drives-from-800-cars-to-million-per-annum/H1-Article1-522476.aspx