Rishi Chopra
ET Intelligence Group
WITH traditional models of investments such
as US-64 and bank deposits no longer paying off, even corporates are faced with a fewer
investment options than before. As a result, most corporates today have turned their
attention to income and liquid schemes of private mutual funds, rather then leave cash
lying idle in the bank. Hindustan Lever, ITC and Wipro are among those which have invested
in MFs in a big way. There are only a few like Bajaj Auto who have dared to directly
invest into the equity market only to end up burning its fingers.
Out of Hindustan Lever’s Rs 1,635
crore investment portfolio, more than Rs 500 crore today is in mutual funds compared to
just Rs 104 crore a year back. HLL has carefully divided its investment over different
funds with not more than Rs 40 crore in a single scheme. HLL’s investments are
divided over 10-12 liquid, income as well as gilt schemes of different mutual funds
ranging from Prudential, Alliance, Zurich, HDFC and so on.
Wipro too has invested in mutual funds in a
big way. Currently, it has over Rs 410 crore invested in various money market liquid
schemes of mutual fund compared to nil last year. Its highest investment, as of end March
02, was in Prudential ICICI with Rs 78 crore followed by HDFC Mutual with Rs 52 crore.
Similarly, ITC has poured Rs 84 crore into various mutual fund schemes in 2001-02 compared
to almost nil last year.
Even companies like Tata Chemicals and
Hindalco, which already had a reasonably high exposure to mutual funds, have further
increased their allocations. For Hindalco, the exposure to mutual funds has gone up from
Rs 120 crore to more than RS 270 crore, with most of the new investments going into income
and gilt schemes of HDFC Prudential and Birla Mutual funds. Some of the other corporates
which have made a fresh entry into mutual funds include Merck, Mid-Day Multimedia, JK
Paper, Torrent Pharma, Tata Infomedia, Timken, Sonata Software and so on.
Only few have dared to tread the equity
path, Bajaj Auto being one. The company seems to have been an active participant in the
stock markets buying and selling shares throughout the year. Bajaj Auto held 2.28 lakh
shares of GTL and 4.3 crore shares of ICICI as of end March 02 (the latter amounting to
3.51% stake).
