Mf Newsline

Alliance Mutual Fund has rolled out a series of closed-end fixed maturity plans aimed at big ticked investors. With an objective to earn regular income as well as capital appreciation, Alliance Term Plan seeks a mandate to invest in fixed income securities carrying a maturity profile coinciding with the maturity of the plan.

The initial offer for 98-day and 378-day series opened for a one-day subscription on August 1, 2001. The AMC will offer a 98-day series and a 378-day series plan on every Wednesday and on 21st day of every month, respectively.

With a face value of Rs 1,000, the minimum investment in the plans is pegged at Rs 50 lakh. A fixed maturity plan sets the yield for investors at the outset, thus ironing out any ups and downs in the interest rates.

Further, the AMC will charge an exit load of 5 percent on premature redemption to prevent any distortion in yield. While the plans will offer dividend and growth options, dividends will be declared on respective maturity dates.

IDBI's Child I-Nit '97 scheme has been converted in to an open-end fund with effect from July 31, 2001. Rechristened "IDBI-Principal Child Benefits Fund", the scheme will carry an equity-debt allocation of 40:60.

The two plans viz-: One time Investment Plan and Recurring Annual Investment Plan have been renamed as Career Builder and Future Guard Plan, respectively and the insurance cover under the latter has been capped at Rs 50,000.

The compulsory lock-in period of three years has been removed and the investors under both the plans can redeem their units before the targeted period of 7, 10 and 15 years by paying an exit load.

However a higher load may be charged for redemption on account of demise of the beneficiary. The AMC gave a one-day exit option to investors not in the favor of the changes.

Kothari Pioneer Mutual Fund, India's first private sector mutual fund has changed its name to Pioneer ITI Mutual Fund. The change in name is on account of the H.C. Kothari Group (which was one of the founding partners of the venture) being no longer associated with the firm, having sold their stake in ITI (The Investment Trust of India) in October 1999.

The AMC manages assets worth Rs 3000 crore for over 730,000 investors. It started operations in 1993 as a joint venture between Pioneer, America's oldest mutual funds and ITI, one of India's established finance companies.

HDFC Liquid Fund will declare the Net Asset Value (NAV) on all the seven days of the week. The Fund has also revised the Applicable NAV and cut-off time for all investments made in to the fund.

As against the present cut-off time of 10.30 A M, any investment application received before the 10 A.M on a business day will be processed on the preceding day's NAV. And the application received between 10 A.M to 12 noon will be processed on the NAV at the close of the business day.

In case the next day is a holiday or a series of holiday, the application received within the above time limit will be processed on the NAV of the day preceding the Business day or the last holiday in sequence respectively.

In addition to this, for applications received during 10 A.M and 12 Noon on a Friday, the NAV at the close of that day will be applicable but if the following Saturday is a holiday, the NAV as on Sunday will be applicable.

Also for all switch-over requests received during 9.30 A.M and 3.30 P.M will be processed on that day's NAV. The above changes apply to both the dividend reinvestment as well as the growth plans and will come in effect from July 30, 2001.