BusinessTimes
DUTCH agro lender Rabobank International is open to talks with fund managers interested in creating a unit trust fund in Malaysia from its newly-launched equity-linked food and agribusiness (F&A) indices.
Rabobank International clients products group executive director Leo Boon Yong said it is in talks with some managers in Hong Kong.
"But in Malaysia and Southeast Asia, we have not spoken to any fund managers.
"We hope to bring it (the fund) to Malaysia if there are fund managers interested to wrap it," he told a news conference to announce Rabobank's two new F&A equity-linked indices in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.
Leo said the indices, which focus on "the next phase" of agriculture boom, allows investors and fund managers to construct investment products to capture future growth in the agriculture sector.
The indices, Rabo Fastracks Asia Pacific Top20 (RFA20) and Rabo Fastracks Global ex-Asia Top 20 (RFG20), were launched on July 17 to meet the investment community's needs for benchmarks in the whole value chain of the F&A sector.
They are calculated by Standard & Poor's (S&P) and are available on Bloomberg.
Two Malaysian companies, IOI Corp Bhd and Sime Darby Bhd, are included in the RFA20.
Leo said that between January last year and June this year, the two Rabo indices outperformed most F&A funds globally as well as other major global stock indices such as the HS China Enterprise, Kospi 200 and Hang Seng Index.
He said Malaysia was poised to attract investments in the next phase of agriculture boom because investors would be looking for countries with abundant raw materials to set up on-site processing centres for the export market.
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