Bharat 22 Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) has got a huge response from anchor investors, getting oversubscribed six times, (as much as 25 per cent of total issue size, or Rs 2,000 crore) to the tune of Rs 12,000 crore on Tuesday. The ETF, managed by ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company (AMC) comprising 22 blue-chip firms including PSUs, witnessed a big participation from the anchor investors.
The new fund offer (NFO) having a size of over Rs 8,000 crore, received subscriptions from across the board including Mutual Funds, FPI, insurance and retirement funds. The NFO is a part of the larger disinvestment program announced by the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) under Ministry of Finance.
According to Neeraj Kumar Gupta, Secretary, DIPAM, “The Bharat 22 ETF is an excellent avenue for investors to participate in some of the best companies with high future growth potential. The ETF is well diversified with investments across six core sectors and offers good prospects for investors.”
However, Nimesh Shah, MD & CEO, ICICI Prudential AMC said, “We are delighted to see the overwhelming response received from anchor investors and aiding the Government of India's disinvestment programme. Over the next three days, we look forward to active participation from non-anchor investor category which has the opportunity to participate in the India growth story, at a discounted price, through this attractive long term investment opportunity.” The scheme opens for non-anchor investors on Wednesday (ie; November 15), and closes on Friday (ie; November 17, 2017).
“The ETF-Bharat 22 is an interesting composition of mostly profit-making, dividend paying public sector companies and some shares of blue-chip companies like ITC, larsen & Toubro, GAIl, ONGC, NAlCO, BOB, Axis Bank held under the Special Undertaking of Unit Trust of India or SUUTI.
The ETF is a diverse mix of companies within the energy, financials, FMCG and Utilities space and though some of the individual components within the ETF might be having some softness in reported numbers, the basket looks spread out across industries thus reducing a sector/stock risk,” said Mayuresh Joshi, Fund Manager of Angel Broking.
“ETFs are a relatively safer long term investment avenue as they can spread their risk across quality companies. Even fund managers of long-term term savings funds prefer ETFs, hence, there is no reason for individual investors to stay away from it,” Joshi said.