Gold-backed fund initiated by Religare Mutual Fund
As per the media reports, Religare Mutual Fund, an Indian money-manager with 158 billion rupees ($3.4 billion) in assets is mulling to initiate a gold-backed fund in the World's biggest user of the precious metal.
It has appeared that a minimum of 90 % of the assets would be invested by the fund in gold and bullion at all times and one unit will represent 1 gram of the metal. In an e-mailed statement, Religare said that the units will trade on the National and Bombay stock exchanges.
In order to offer gold-backed securities to tap investors' interests in commodities, Religare will join Reliance Capital Ltd., Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd., Benchmark Asset Management Co. and UTI Asset Management.
In the year 2009, gold hiked for the ninth year, touching a record $1,227.50 an ounce on December 3.
It was in 1993, when Exchange-traded funds, known as ETFs were created and since then they have become popular since they expanded investors' access to different type of assets. The biggest exchange-traded fund backed by bullion, SPDR Gold Trust, saw its Bullion holdings unchanged for a sixth day at 1,111.92 metric tons yesterday.
As per the Association of Mutual Funds in India, on 31st December, gold-backed funds managed 13.52 billion rupees in India. In February 2007, the nation's first gold fund was launched by Benchmark Asset Management.
Indian billionaire Singh brothers control the Religare Enterprises Ltd., owns Religare Mutual Fund.
