India story still attracts overseas fund managers

Amidst the global financial turmoil, long-term overseas institutional investors are keen to hear more about the India story. The attendance of these global fund managers in some of the recent investor meets held in India has gone up sharply – in some cases by 30 per cent compared to 2007.

The majority of them are long-term investors or private equity firm such as Genesis, Fidelity, Oppenheimers, Blackstone, Capital International, Soros fund among other private equity, pension and endowment funds.

Predictably, hedge funds whose survival is at stake did not participate in any of the investor conferences held over the last 10 days. These conferences were organized separately by CLSA, JP Morgan, UBS and ENAM.

Fund managers who participated in these meetings, were of the view that the India offers better opportunities once the global markets see some stability. “The current pullout by foreign institutional investors is a compulsion as most investors are facing redemption pressure in their home countries,” a senior fund manager said.

As many as 120 investors participated at the CLSA conference in Delhi last week, as against only 90 in 2007. “The response was a surprise to everyone, a senior official of CLSA said.

A senior ENAM official said these long-term investors are cash-rich and are evaluating the Indian market and companies which are resilient enough.

“In the current market, no investor is willing to commit a large amount of investment, so they are doing selective buying. Once sanity comes back to the global market, they may start investing,” he said.