Jardine Asset Set To Launch Income Fund In Early July

Jardine Fleming Asset Management is set to launch an income fund in early July. This is the second scheme from the AMC after it launched its maiden tax-savings scheme in January 1996. U R Bhatt, chief investment officer, Jardine Fleming AMC, said yesterday that the income scheme -- Jardine Fleming India Bond Fund, will be an open-ended income scheme.

The scheme will not have any initial load on its investors during the initial offer period. "Those investors who subscribe to this scheme during the initial offer period and hold on to this investment for a period of one year, will not be charged any load by the AMC", Bhatt said.

 

After the initial offer period, the scheme will be closed for a period of 45 days and a certain amount of "load" will be added to the net asset value of the units to get the effective sales price.

"When the same investors decide to sell these units, they can sell at the current NAV as the repurchase load had been added to the sale price earlier", Bhatt explained. The scheme will be investing its entire corpus in debt instruments of higher investment grade of the average weightage of AA+. Besides this, there will be some exposure in money market instruments.

The AMC will be targeting retail as well as institutional investors as potential subscribers to this issue. Bhatt disclosed that the AMC has sought a Reserve Bank of India permission to allow foreign institutional investors (FIIs), NRIs and Overseas Corporate Bodies (OCBs) to subscribe to the issue.

The maiden scheme by Jardine Fleming Asset Management has a NAV of Rs 12.37 as of June 6. "Among the tax-savings schemes launched during 1995-96, our schemes has been among the top two performers", Bhatt added.