FII Opinions

Some of the FII Opinions from the Business Standard

Priya Mathur
Vice chair, Investment Committee Trustee, CalPERS

I am bullish on India for several reasons. It appears that India continues to be committed to economic reforms, which are crucial for the country to be an attractive place for direct investment and the development of new businesses.

However, investor protection in the judicial system, corporate governance issues, liquidity of the stock market and the confidence of the Indian populace in its own stock markets continue to be areas of concern.

Key strengths are, of course, technology and BPO. The quality of manufactured goods in India has also now reached international levels, while the cost of labour continues to be low relative to India's big competitors. As a market, of course, India is likely to become one of the biggest.

CalPERS' allocation to India is about $110 million out of a total allocation of $2 billion to emerging markets. Keep in mind that India was only put on CalPERS' investible countries list in April 2004. I expect India to continue to perform well based on CalPERS' annual evaluation of emerging markets.

Soft gains: Punita Kumar Sinha

What worked for us in 2004 was having a big position in Infosys (one of our largest holdings) and being underweighted in oil and gas stocks as well as being overweighted in the engineering, capital goods and construction sectors.

We also benefited from some of our mid-caps holdings where we were early investors - such as Hotel Leela, Sintex, Amtek Auto, Geodesic, KPIT Cummins and Mahavir Spinning.

Maybe we could have been more aggressive in the mid-cap category. We did not expect such a quick rise in mid-caps. We believed in the stories but we expected it to play out over a period of time.

From a risk control point of view, we cannot play the mid-caps as well as the small-sized funds.

One regret is that Indian commodities and oil companies did not perform in line with the their Asian peers.

We are principled: Hazel McNeilage

2004 has been a good year overall for Principal Global Investors. Performance has been competitive. Assets under management have grown from $ 118 billion at December 31, 2003, to $ 129 billion as at September 30, 2004. Various independent surveys have ranked us in the top 10 globally in the dollar value of new institutional mandates won.

In Asia, Principal Financial Group's business has grown rapidly and now Principal and its affiliated companies (including, of course, Principal PNB Asset Management) manage a total of around $ 4 billion for clients in Asia (ex-Japan).

Our philosophy in managing equities continues to be superior stock selection, combined with disciplined risk management. We believe this is the key to generating superior performance.

Within stock selection, our focus is unchanged - we work on identifying stocks with improving business fundamentals, sustainability in these improvements, rising investor expectations and attractive valuation. While, of course, not all of our stock calls have added value, overall this continues to be a successful strategy.

Sell short: Jim Rogers

My view on India is bearish. I will not buy in India at all.

My investment in India is zero. My best bet for 2005 is commodities.

My stock strategy is to sell short.

Four-wheel drive: Andrew Holland

2004 started off brightly enough, but then we were all caught out by the crash following the elections. It took a bit of time to overcome the downsides. For me, 2004 was the year when India was firmly placed on the FII radar.

Another important feature was that a lot of good quality IPOs hit the markets - like ONGC and TCS. Mid-caps made their mark, too, emerging as an asset class in themselves.

Our best calls were on auto (four-wheelers), power, engineering and software. For 2005, we are bullish on auto (four-wheelers), power, engineering, software and cement and neutral on pharma. For me a key indicator of India's promising outlook was when CalPERS entered the Indian markets - an indicator that the outlook on India continued to be bullish.

I am disappointed with the fact that SBI has still not opened up and that the increase in FDI in the telecom sector is yet to happen.

We are raising our Sensex estimates to 7,000 by November, 2005.