MR V Srivatsa, Fund Manager-Senior Vice President, UTI Mutual Funds, was invited to IIM Indore PGP at Mumbai for a guest lecture on Equity Markets and Fund management. Mr. Srivatsa is a CA from Institute of chartered accounts of India. He is also an alumnus of IIM Indore, batch 2002. He has 12 years of experience in the equity markets in India, 8 years in Fund management and years in equity markets in India, 8 years in Fund management and 4years in equity research. His research experience was in various sectors such as IT, healthcare, oil and gas and cement. At present he is handling around Rs 1500 crores of equity assets in UTI in both funds and advisory mandates.

Mr Srivatsa addressed the participants at IIM Indore, PGP at Mumbai and gave them insights on Equity Markets and Fund Management on 25 January 2014. The session started with Mr Srivatsa sharing his views on investing. According to him the most important thing is to define the objective of investing. Then the benchmarks have to be defined. The objective of mutual funds is beating the benchmarks and that of the hedge funds is absolute returns.

He also discussed some key factors for managing funds:

• Understanding the pulse of the economy and where the economy is directed.
• Understanding the Global flows across asset classes.
• Understanding the changing laws and regulations in major regulated sectors (Telecom, Banking, Oil and Gas)
• Understanding specific company, sector trends and shift.
• Understanding Global trends in major Global oriented sectors such as metals, IT, healthcare.

When asked by a participant about the effects of other economies on Indian economy, and which major countries to keep a watch on – Mr Srivatsa pointed out that US and Europe are big influencers but China affects the commodities and asset prices to a large extent.

Impact of various economic variables – fiscal deficit, interest rates, BOP, inflation – was also focussed upon. Along with the detailed discussion on when to go short (or sell) or long (or purchase), the factors for buying securities, the defensive, discretionary, cyclical and growth sectors were focussed on.

The session concluded with case discussions on TCS, Amara Raja Batteries Ltd. And BHEL, focussing on key challenges in fund management, attributes of a good fund etc.