Sunday, July 27, 2008

BIG BOYS FOR BIG FUND WILL BE NAMED NEXT WEEK

New Delhi: The list of private sector companies to manage Rs 2,40,000-crore Employees Provident Fund (EPF) is likely to be cleared at the upcoming Central Board of Trustees meeting, scheduled to be held next week.

The board, chaired by labour and employment minister Oscar Fernandes, will decide the final names from those who cleared the two-step process of technical and financial bids. The board — with representatives from ten employees’ organisations, ten employers’ organisations, central and state governments, apart from EPFO Central Provident Fund Commissioner — has to decide on a minimum of three fund managers to handle EPF corpus.

Ten firms had cleared technical bids, including Reliance, HDFC, ICICI Prudential, Templeton, HSBC, the Tatas, the UTI subsidiary, SBI and PNB. Of these ten, a few have already been shortlisted on the basis of clearing financial bids, a source told The Indian Express.

Refusing to divulge the names of these firms, the source said that the final list would be based on the board’s stringent evaluation of firms in the fray. The EPF board’s finance and investment committee met and pruned the list of ten fund managers.

Till now, SBI was solely managing the entire EPF corpus. With this move, its monopoly will end. The government last year decided to diversify the funds and appoint private sector companies after it expressed its unhappiness with SBI’s fund management. It was dissatisfied with sub-optimal investments by SBI and held it responsible for lower returns on its large portfolio.
Source: The Indian Express

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