Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Prudential Fund’s new fund to invest in ETFs

TheEdge

KUALA LUMPUR: Prudential Fund Management Bhd (PFMB) has launched its 35th fund that aims to offset investors’ fears by providing them with capital growth over the medium to long term through investments in a diversified portfolio of exchanged traded funds (ETFs).

With an approved size of 1.2 billion units, Prudential Country Selection Fund will invest at least 95% of its net asset value in ETFs that are liquid. It is structured as a fund of funds and will be investing in at least five different ETFs, which are chosen from 22 pre-selected ETFs.

“We choose to launch this fund at this time because we feel that it is an opportune time to do so seeing that investors are concerned about the volatile conditions in the global market.

“Historical data has shown that there will always be countries that strategically outperform others. The fund mitigates global market risks by strategically diversifying its investments in the selected five performing ETFs,” said PFMB chief executive officer Mark Toh.

He said the fund managers would re-rank the ETFs every month and rebalance the portfolio accordingly. “That way, no matter what the market conditions are the fund is expected to maximise the potential of your investments,” he said in a statement in conjunction with the fund’s launch here yesterday.

“These 22 equity markets will then be ranked according to expected future performance using a total of 17 macroeconomic and fundamental research inputs. As always, we are cautiously optimistic that the fund will be well received considering that most of our distributing partners will be distributing the product,” said Toh.

The Prudential Country Selection Fund will be available for subscription from today at 25 sen per unit for a minimum investment of RM1,000. The initial offer period will end April 7.

PFMB currently manages Prudential Assurance Malaysia Bhd and Prudential BSN Takaful funds.

With the latest launch, PFMB assets under management have grown to over RM12.6 billion consisting of over RM3.7 billion from the retail unit trust business and some RM8.9 billion from private mandate. PFMB now manages 35 unit trust funds.

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