Monday, November 19, 2007

For Indians, the concept of capital account convertibility was relegated to books... until now!

Truly so, but getting a taste of the varied equities across the globe are just initial steps in the direction of practical capital account convertibility. On this account, even Reliance Mutual Fund is carrying on talks with the London fund house Schroders, Barclays & Royal Bank of Scotland to tie-up on a reciprocal basis. “We are in talks with various potential foreign partners,” said Emerge Reliance MF spokesperson, refraining to divulge further details.

The situation is similar with Tata AMC, which is in advanced talks with global fund houses and investment advisors in a similar attempt to offer global investment products; and not staying behind is UTI AMC, which has already gained the first mover’s advantage by entering into an ‘Investment Advisory Agreement’ with State Street Global Advisors Asia Limited (SSgA Asia) to launch the ‘Global Navigator Fund’. R. Raja, Senior Vice President, UTI AMC, claimed that through their fund, “an Indian investor gets an opportunity to access the global markets, specially equity markets, by investing in these funds. He can diversify across countries, thereby reducing the country risk of his investments.” Frankly, you can buy equity in Russia; gold in Brazil; debt in Africa; and of course, perhaps even islands in ‘The World’ Dubai (the photograph above) – a group of islands in Dubai shaped like the world, where celebrities like David Beckham, Rod Stewart, Michael Schumacher et al, are rumoured to have already purchased islands. But well, there’s just one hindering block... money!
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Source: IIPM Editorial, 2006

An IIPM and Management Guru Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Initiative