Although most of India’s mutual funds saw their assets fall sharply in the fiscal year through March, the list of the industry’s leaders remains remarkably stable, according to the India 20, Institutional Investor’s exclusive fourth annual ranking of the country’s top fund managers.
Reliance Capital Asset Management Co. extends its lead at the top. The firm boasted $19.5 billion of assets at the end of March, off just 6.7 percent from a year earlier. ICICI Prudential stays in second place despite suffering a 20.6 percent drop in assets, to $9.9 billion. HDFC Asset Management Co., UTI Asset Management Co. and Birla Asset Management Co. round out the top five, as they did last year. Overall, assets of the top 20 firms fell 21.8 percent, to $91.1 billion.
Only two of the top 20 fund managers — LIC Mutual Fund Asset Management Co. and IDFC Asset Management Co. — added new assets over the previous year. LIC leaps from No. 12 to sixth place, having attracted $1.7 billion in assets to its LICMF Liquid money market fund. IDFC, the former Standard Chartered Bank subsidiary that was acquired by India’s Infrastructure Development Finance Co. in May 2008, jumps from No. 17 to No. 11, again on the back of money market funds.
Among the biggest losers, Tata Asset Management falls to No. 12 from eighth place, HSBC Asset Management (India) lost 45.6 percent of its assets in dollar terms and falls four places, to No. 15. JM Financial Asset Management faced a major setback and slides from No. 14 to No. 20, having lost both equity and debt assets.
How the Ranking Was Compiled Institutional Investor’s fourth annual ranking identifies India’s top 20 fund managers by assets. New York–based Senior Editor Jane B. Kenney and Mumbai-based Contributing Editor Niraj Bhatt compiled the ranking from questionnaires filled out by the institutions themselves. II refined this data through follow-up faxes, e-mails and telephone calls. When official data were unavailable, II obtained figures from Web sites and other public sources. All figures are in millions of dollars as of March 31, 2009, converted from rupees using the exchange rate on that date.