Growth in Indian MFs among fastest in world

Led by a rising equity market and matching investor interest, growth of the Indian mutual funds industry, which recently crossed the Rs 350,000-crore mark, is among the fastest in the world.
Data released in a recent report shows that during calendar year 2006, the industry’s growth at 43.6 per cent made it the world’s eight-fastest. Sandwiched between the UK (43.8 per cent) and Ireland (40.5 per cent), India is way below Russia’s 134.1 per cent but above Brazil’s 38.2 per cent.

Story in The Indian Express, May 09, 2007

Here’s what Rs 50 can buy

Pankaj Razdan is not a man you link with the poor, or even non-rich. Razdan represents the under-40, highly-ambitious, highly-aggressive breed of new managers who are attempting to change the financial services landscape of India. As CEO of ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund, India’s second largest asset management company (AMC), Razdan’s track record of growth and customers has been anything but poor — institutional, corporate and high net worth clients remained the centre of attention; at best, the fund targeted the growing arena of middle- and upper-middle class.

Opinion in The Indian Express, May 01, 2007

Whodunnit Mistry

Fifteen top names in the financial sector switched off their cellphones and had hectic discussions spread over seven meetings that began at 9 am and ended at 6 pm, reaching 100 per cent unanimity in all recommendations. They represent the minds behind the ‘report of the high powered expert committee on making Mumbai an international financial centre’. If the title is a mouthful, the contents of the Percy Mistry committee report are somewhat formidable. For these 15 minds are really dreaming big.
It is one thing to announce the evolution of Mumbai from the financial capital of India into an international financial centre (IFC) amidst table thumping in Parliament as Finance Minister P. Chidambaram did on February 28, 2006. It is quite another to convert that aspiration into reality. You need grey hair, grey matter, a lot of organising power, ability to foresee the practical. But above all, you need to dream. This report lacks none of these and if three words were needed to define the big ideas in this report, they are: scale, reform, competition.

Opinion in The Indian Express, April 03, 2007

True gurus

You must meet him (a guru), a follower advised me. “He’s doing great work — and I’m part of that great work. We’ve uplifted hundreds in this village, thousands in that district, millions altogether. We’ve transformed convicts. We’ve changed lives, even souls. Meet him, write about us, give us publicity.”
I get to hear this monologue once a week or oftener. Couple of times, in my naivete, I even went out of my way to get some gyan, become a ‘better person’, learn to get in touch with my spirit. All in vain.

Opinion in The Indian Express, March 26, 2007

Feeling homesick?

The numbers are scary. As an Indian Express story on March 19 revealed, a person who 18 months ago had taken a 7.5 per cent 20 year loan for Rs 20 lakh to buy a house and would be paying an EMI of Rs 16,111, would have his future generations paying it in perpetuity if the EMI did not rise. Because of the sharp and steady increase in home loan interest rates, from 7.5 per cent then to 11 per cent today, and assuming this householder did not want to increase EMI, tenure rises from 20 years when begun, to 30 years at 9.5 per cent to 70 years at an interest rate of 10 per cent. Beyond this rate, the interest component of the EMI (which comprises interest and principal) rises beyond Rs 16,111. Meaning, unless the EMI is increased, he will be in a perpetual debt trap.

Opinion in The Indian Express, March 21, 2007

It’s a flat, flat world

The 541 point, or 4 per cent, crash in the Sensex on Wednesday coincided with P. Chidambaram’s fourth budget under the UPA administration. But that’s just where the coincidences end. The reasons for this fall lie outside the Budget, outside Parliament, outside the Indian economy — they lie in China, Philippines, Brazil, Mexico and, of course, the US.

Opinion in The Indian Express, March 01, 2007

Markets dive but why this could be an overreaction

NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 28 : No big-bang reforms. No cut in tax rates. No major change in tax slabs. And barring the needless increase in dividend distribution tax (DDT), an impractical, inflation-contending strategic cut in cement, extension of minimum alternative tax (MAT), and an incentive-killing application of Fringe Benefit Tax to ESOPs (employees’ stock option plan), no major change worth writing home about.
Just the right formula for keeping a long-term household budget, riding long-term high economic growth, in place.

Story in The Indian Express, March 01, 2007