ICICI Prudential MF to launch new close-ended equity fund soon

ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund will soon launch a new scheme 'ICICI Prudential Value Fund-series 1', which is a close-ended equity scheme with a focus on investing on stocks that trade at a discount to their true value.

The new fund offer will open for subscription on October 18 and will close on October 28, 2013.

According to the fund house, this scheme aims to adopt 'value investing approach', where low priced stocks with higher fundamentals are identified and invested in with the aim of long-term capital appreciation.

"Generally, we have seen equities provide healthy return when bought during periods of low GDP growth and we feel that we are in such a period.

"A close-ended fund like our new fund is well positioned to capture this opportunity for investors," Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund, Nimesh Shah said.

He also said the company will focus on retail investors to invest in the new scheme and has witnessed encouraging response from the investors.

Shah, however, declined to give any figure which the company is aiming to raise from this close-ended scheme.

On the specifics of market capitalisation, Shah said the scheme would invest in all kind of scrips, irrespective of their market capitalisation and would be sector agnostic.

ICICI Prudential MF is the joint venture between ICICI Bank and UK based financial services group, Prudential Plc, in which ICICI Bank holds the majority stake.