Templeton's India equity team will hire two analysts

Franklin Templeton Investments plans to hire two India stock analysts to increase its coverage of a market that has outperformed its developing nation peers this year.

The analysts have been offered jobs and both are expected to join in about a month, Sukumar Rajah, chief investment officer at the company’s India unit, said in an interview today at a Franklin Templeton conference in Vienna. Rajah’s team of analysts and fund managers has doubled in the past six years and will grow to 14 with the two new hires, he said. He declined to name the new analysts.

“We are trying to increase the depth of coverage,” said Rajah, who runs the team from Chennai, and helps oversee about $6 billion in India.

India’s Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index has surged 67 per cent in 2009, beating a 63 per cent gain in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. Foreign investors have purchased a net $14.2 billion of Indian equities this year, according to the Securities & Exchange Board of India.