Funds' equity shuffle in '13

Top managers kept juggling portfolio, with state-owned banks the most avoided and IT & private banks embraced

India’s top equity fund managers juggled a lot in 2013 when it came to their top stock picks. Amid continuous uncertainty and the threat of downgrades looming large on India for most of the year, they were forced to restructure portfolios.

Interestingly, in several cases, they ended by either exiting the scrips they started the year with higher allocation or reduced the exposure significantly.

There is a clear polarisation of equity assets to IT majors and private banks. Infosys and ICICI Bank have been the most-sought investments. State-owned banks were the most avoided among top picks, be it State Bank of India (SBI), Punjab National Bank or Bank of Baroda (BoB). (TOP HOLDINGS)

Consider India’s largest equity fund, HDFC Top 200. Managed by Prashant Jain, considered a star fund manager in the sector, it had Infosys replacing SBI as the top pick; the latter got relegated to fourth  pick during the year. Reliance Industries managed to be Jain's third top pick in the current portfolio, which otherwise was at the 10th position in allocation. ICICI continued to remain the second largest pick but BoB had to move out from the top-10 category in the fund.

Reliance Growth Fund, managed by Sunil Singhania, saw several changes in its top investment counters. The fund started the year with Strides Arcolab as the top pick. This scrip, however, was reduced to the 10th largest investment, from the latest statistics. Singhania, too, kept ICICI as second top pick, while HCL Technologies had the largest allocation. As for SBI, the country's largest lender could not find place among Singhania’s top-10.

K N Sivasubramanian at Franklin Templeton continued with Infosys and Bharti Airtel but changed the order of allocation. He made the former his top pick, with a massive allocation of 10.51 per cent, the highest by a fund manager. Bharti Airtel saw a marginal reduction in exposure. He pulled ICICI and YES Bank up in the order of allocation and pushed Dr Reddy’s Laboratories to fifth position this year, from the earlier third. SBI, in particular, bore the brunt of most fund managers this year. The counter was the top pick of DSP BlackRock's Top 100 equity fund, with an allocation of 7.7 per cent of assets at the start of year. However, Apoorva Shah, who manages the fund, chose to get rid of the scrip from its top-10 investments. He juggled almost the entire top-10 holdings — Wipro, ICICI, Infosys, Bharti Airtel and Reliance Industries were his top picks.

S Naren, chief investment officer at ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund started this year with Cairn India as top holding, a little over nine per cent allocation, followed by Bharti Airtel. As the year comes to an end, the portfolio shows Infosys as top pick, followed by ICICI. He cut allocation to Cairn by a little more than half.