Volatile market may benefit NRI investors

NRI investors are watching the current bearish days on the Indian stock market with trepidation. From the peak of the bull run at over 20,000 on June 8, the Sensex has plummeted to less than 14,000 now. The rise in crude prices has fuelled inflation at over 11 per cent and the recent monetary policies to curb demand have accelerated the decline of the Sensex.

Considering the current volatility in the equity market, what does an NRI investor do? For some, the knee jerk reaction would be to panic and start selling in anticipation of the market weakening further due to rocketing oil prices and spiralling inflation.

For others, it could be ’Hold on!’ The market can go lower and better bargains can be picked up for stocks, including blue chips. It all depends on how much lower will be the market decline and for how long.

And as Indian stocks may get sucked in the global spiral of depression, the third option for some NRIs would be to buy right now, as the market seems to be heading to its bottom.

This opposite view is for the adventurous. Those who look to the silver lining and have an appetite for risk taking think that the market will go up again because of India’s overall economic strength.

Inflation in India is expected to come down after six months, according to the finance minister. So these investors are bullish on the long-term prospects of the Indian economy where the Risk-Reward Ratio is in their favour. Thus they can invest now to add low priced stocks to their portfolios for possible high gains later on.

Finally, there are the extra-cautious NRI investors. They do not want to speculate in the market but want to safeguard their hard earned investment funds 100 percent and so go for fixed returns. With real returns from fixed income options turning negative due to spiralling inflation and uncertain equity markets in the medium term, they do not know what to do

Now with all these conditions, how can you have your cake and also eat it? Since stocks are not the answer for these trepid investors, mutual funds have recently launched innovative structured products for them. Known as Equity-Linked Fixed Maturity Plans, these schemes provide a 100 percent capital safety with returns linked to the equity market albeit with some conditions.

Investment advisor Sanjay Durgan of AbunDanze explains how it works: "There is an Initial Value, Observation Value and the Closing Value of the Reference Index that is NIFTY. The Observation Date for NIFTY is fixed as the last Thursday of every month during the tenure of the plan. Returns are determined based on the difference between the Closing and Initial Value of NIFTY. Depending on the structure of the scheme, the Closing Value could be the average of the last three months NIFTY Observations of the period of the scheme."

Adds Durgan: "Depending on the structure of the scheme, the Initial Value of NIFTY could be the closing date of investment in the plan or some average of the initial few months. Observation dates for NIFTY are fixed as the last Thursday of every month. The catch lies in the Observation Values that are pre-conditions known as ’triggers’ that could apply if any Observation Value were to breach them."

For example, if at Closing Level, NIFTY rises by 50 per cent from the initial level, the investor gets 150 per cent participation (i.e. 50 multiplied by 1.5 ensure 75 per cent absolute return on investment).

However, a trigger condition could be if NIFTY were to rise by more than 100 percent or any Observation Date, then the investor gets a flat 65 percent absolute return after 36 months.

If NIFTY falls, the investor still gets the principal amount in full. The minimum amount for investment is Rs.5,000 and the period is fixed for such investments. It can be 21, 36 months or as structured by the fund house.

In this ’heads you win and tails you win’ situation, a risk averse investor is protected for the face value of the capital with a potential to generate returns linked to the equity market.

Since these are close-ended schemes, they are ideally suited for those who have the relevant time horizon for investment and are looking for a little more excitement than the plain old vanilla fixed-income options.

"Though the capital is safe, the returns are maximized only if the market moves within a certain range. This is more like the casino that works on probabilities but your money is safe," said Durgan. If you are a conservative investor, this is a ’win-win’ situation.

Now brain drain from Britain to India

Thousands of people face the prospect of losing their jobs due to the current credit crunch and a downturn in the British economy. A steep rise in the cost of living in recent months has further prompted professionals to look beyond borders.

Fresh MBA graduates from the University of Oxford’s Said Business School have taken the initiative to organise a recruitment fair in Mumbai on July 30 and 31. They have already received an enthusiastic response from potential recruiters.

Apart from Britons and British-Asians seeking employment abroad, professionals leaving the country include many among the recently arrived highly skilled migrants from Poland, Nigeria and Australia.

The Institute of Public Policy Research says that they may have better job prospects back home, where they can also avoid Britains spiralling cost of living.

Private hospitals in India often recruit doctors working in the National Health Service (NHS). These include Indian doctors who came to the UK some years ago and are now choosing to return home for better working conditions.

A recent survey revealed that British graduates were prepared to fill nearly 200,000 jobs in Indian call centres by 2009. Several Indian and British call centres recruit British graduates from regions that have large Asian population. Their accent helps them interact with British customers while working in call centres in India.

For British Asians, working in Indian call centres has a double attraction they get a job that helps them connect with their roots.

A Scottish history graduate recently made news by quitting his job in Sky Television with an annual salary of 21,000 pounds to work in an Indian call centre.

Officials at Oxfords Sad Business School said that the recruitment event in Mumbai will offer Indian recruiters a unique opportunity to meet outstanding postgraduate student talent under one roof.

One of the organisers, MBA student Tarun Dhillon, who has a background in Aerospace and Defence, said, "With the advent of India as a global business leader, many of the bright minds from Oxford look forward to taking on the business challenges in the booming Indian economy and to be part of India’s success story."

"I am delighted with the level of interest from the class and we hope to engage with a range of companies in a variety of sectors. We hope this inaugural event will become an annual fixture in the School’s recruitment calendar," Dhillon said.

Simon Tankard, Head of Careers at the business school, said, "It is a fantastic opportunity for recruiters in India to get to know our students and for the students to learn about the organisations that interest them."

"Many of our students are looking to high-flying international careers and we are delighted to support this student-led initiative that brings together the collective insight and connections of the organising group with the services and connections of the Business School."

Another MBA student Deepti Gali said, "The buoyancy in the Indian economy is evident in the number of outbound cross border deals and the amount of private equity money flowing in."

"I am sure working in India would provide a perfect platform from which to launch my post-MBA career."

India, Iran pipeline deal 'by next month'

India expects to finalise a deal "by next month" on a pipeline that will transport gas from Iran, Oil Minister Murli Deora told on Thursday.

"We discussed this here again yesterday," Deora said in an interview on the sidelines of the World Petroleum Congress in Madrid when asked about the project. "There should be an end to dialogue now."

"The only issue still being negotiated is the delivery point. We wanted it on the border of India and Pakistan and they were suggesting on the border of Pakistan and Iran."

"But these things are being sorted out at a very high level now, and I hope by next month things will be okay," he said.

Asked when the deal could be signed, he said: "I hope by next month."

Why Reliance is going Hollywood

Over the past 18 months, executives from Hollywood studios have been reaching out to their Indian counterparts in Bollywood, Mumbai’s answer to Tinseltown. Studios such as Walt Disney (DIS), Sony Pictures (SNE), and Paramount have signed deals with ambitious Indian entertainment companies eager to take advantage of the booming Indian economy.

The No. 2 movie in the US, The Happening, was co-produced by Fox Searchlight and Mumbai-based UTV Motion Pictures, which financed half of the film’s $57 million budget. On May 18, a division of Reliance Big Entertainment, a unit of India’s giant Reliance group of companies, signed deals (BusinessWeek, 5/12/08) to produce and develop movies with A-list actors Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Nicolas Cage, and Brad Pitt. "If you have global ambitions, then Hollywood is the right starting point," says Rajesh Sawhney, president of Reliance Big Entertainment.

Now, comes possibly the biggest Indian move into Hollywood yet. Steven Spielberg and David Geffen’s DreamWorks SKG is in talks with India’s Reliance Big Entertainment, part of the Reliance ADA empire owned by Anil Ambani, to spin off a new movie joint enterprise. The $1.5 billion debt-equity deal, which Reliance is expected to partly finance, came after weeks of speculation that DreamWorks’ team was looking for private equity after telling Viacom’s (VIA) Paramount Pictures last year they intended to bolt from their three-year deal.

Soros Holds 3% Reliance Stake

Reliance insiders claim that the deal is "yet to be structured and too premature," but investment bankers in India believe the Reliance funding in DreamWorks could largely be private equity. In exchange, Reliance may pick up a stake in the new DreamWorks venture, and also sign a pact to make movies.

If the deal goes through, it will be DreamWorks’ second association with an Indian company. In January, DreamWorks Animation (DWA), an independent unit set up four years ago, tied up with Paprikaas Interactive Services, an animation house based in Bangalore, for creative and technical services. The first animation alliance by DreamWorks outside the US, the partnership is part of the studio’s pact with Thomson (TMS), the $9.3 billion French media house, to have a dedicated studio in Bangalore. Thomson’s entertainment business arm Technicolor holds a controlling stake in Paprikaas.

DreamWorks’ talks with Reliance come at a time when the Indian conglomerate, a fairly new entrant into the business, is firing on all the entertainment fronts. In February, George Soros invested $100 million for a 3% stake. The company said it would use the money for expansion. "We want more of every bit of the entertainment pie," says Reliance Entertainment Chairman Amit Khanna. "To be a significant global player, we believe that we need to raise the bar and aspire more."

Soros already owns the rights to 59 of DreamWorks’ older films, which his Soros Strategic Partners bought in 2006 from Paramount Pictures. (Paramount continues to distribute the films for Soros.)
Casting a Wide Entertainment Net

Reliance scripted its Hollywood entry more than eight months ago. Last year, Reliance invested (BusinessWeek.com, 4/15/08) in Phoenix Theatres, a Knoxville (Tenn.)-based film management company. It bought Burbank (Calif.)-based Lowry Digital Images, a film imaging and restoration outfit, in April. Early this year, Reliance, which owns more than 170 cinemas in India, quietly acquired 250 cinemas from mom-and-pop operators in 28 cities in the US including San Jose, Chicago, and Washington, DC.

The US isn’t the only country where Reliance is expanding. In May, it bought a chain of 25 cinemas in Malaysia. Like the purchases in the US, the Malaysian cinemas were targeting the large Indian diaspora and also other Asian communities such as the Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese. The plan is to exhibit Bollywood movies, as well as regional Indian films in languages like Telugu and other Asian languages.

Reliance may be a newcomer, but it has already shown it can command attention from the film industry’s elite. At the Cannes Film Festival last month, Khanna (an erstwhile Bollywood director and lyricist) announced that Reliance was spending $1 billion to develop films over the next two years. It struck deals with the production houses of eight Hollywood actors including Clooney, Pitt, Hanks, and Cage. The deal, brokered by Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency, allows Reliance to pay for the development of scripts and gives it the option to fund up to half the cost of making any film it develops-and thereby reap half the profits. The films would then likely be distributed by Hollywood studios, with Reliance retaining some foreign rights.

Reliance’s global aspirations cut across every business category, with interests in power, telecom, and financial services, as well as music, broadcasting, social networking, and gaming Web sites. Reliance, India’s second-largest telecom player, is also currently in merger talks (BusinessWeek.com, 5/27/08) with South Africa’s MTN to create a $63 billion telecom juggernaut with 116 million subscribers, larger than AT&T (T) and many European players. In its bid for MTN, Anil Ambani’s company is fighting against Reliance Industries, controlled by his elder brother Mukesh Ambani, with whom he has had an ongoing feud. Mukesh says that he has the first right of refusal in the MTN deal.

(Lakshman covers India business for BusinessWeek)

One crore Indians starve as grains rot in FCI godowns

Over 10 lakh tonnes of foodgrains worth several hundred crores of rupees, which could have fed over one crore hungry people for a year, were damaged in Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns during the last one decade.

The damages were suffered despite the FCI spending Rs 242 crore while trying to prevent any loss of foodgrains during storage. Ironically another 2.59 crore was spent just to dispose off the rotten foodgrains.

These startling facts came in reply to a Right to Information (RTI) application filed by a Delhi resident. FCI informed that 10 lakh tonnes of foodgrain was damaged in the godowns of government owned agency which is responsible for procurement and distribution of foodgrains across the country.

The FCI informed that 1.83 lakh tonnes of wheat, 3.95 lakh tonnes of rice, 22 thousand tonnes of paddy and 110 tonnes of maize were damaged between 1997 to 2007.

The FCI said in the northern region -- UP, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi -- the damage incurred was seven lakh tonnes and the PSU spent Rs 87.15 crore to prevent the loss besides spending over Rs 60 lakh to dispose off the damaged foodgrain.

Keeping in view the amount of money spent by the FCI for preservation of foodgrains in its godown, the quantum of damage is huge. Is it not a national shame?" the RTI applicant Dev Ashish Bhattacharya said.

Similarly in eastern India -- Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal -- the damage incurred was 1.5 tonnes of foodgrains while the FCI spent Rs 122 crore to prevent it from rotting. But the damaged lot was disposed off after spending another Rs 1.65 crore.

In southern region -- Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala-- the damage incurred was 43,069.023 tonnes despite spending Rs 25 crore. This damaged foodgrain was disposed off after spending another Rs 34,867.

While damage in Maharashtra and Gujarat mounted to 73,814 tonnes, the FCI spent Rs 2.78 crore to prevent the loss. However, this lot was also disposed off later at a cost of Rs 24 lakh.

In Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the damage incurred was 23,323.57 tonnes of foodgrains and the amount spent to stop the damage was Rs 5.5 crore.

The story was no different from other go-downs as the FCI spent Rs 10.64 lakh for disposing damaged foodgrains.

"The data given by FCI seems manipulated. In case of Jharkhand, the foodgrain damage is 3,699 tonnes which is comparatively low than other states. But the money spent to dispose off the damage is Rs 1.4 crore, which is high when compared to the other states," Dev Ashish said.

'Derivatives don't kill people; people kill people'

Did you know...? Private investors like you can make 230% of emerging Asia’s super-soar-away gains between now and 2014.You’re only tied in for three years. An early exit will return 130% of your initial investment. And yes – it really does sound just too good to be true.

"Citigroup said these products should be for sophisticated investors only. But the municipalities were definitely not sophisticated investors..."

So says Eystein Kleven of the Financial Supervisory Authority in Norway, speaking this week to The Guardian newspaper. He’s investigating the collapse of public funds in Narvik, a small town of 18,000 people some 140 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

"Terra Securities misled them," Kleven goes on. The municipality lost $35 million on high-risk US mortgage-backed investments. Seven other small Norwegian towns were also hit, apparently.

Why? Terra got busy selling Citigroup-issued derivatives to profit-hungry public investors. But it failed to explain that if their market price fell below 55% of face value, the products would be forcibly redeemed, leaving small towns like Narvik with an instant loss of 45 cents in the dollar or more.

Which is just what happened last summer, of course. Yet Narvik opted to pump fresh funds into these products, hoping they’d come back in due course. So now the same dumb investment has made the town’s fund managers look stupid twice.

"Terra Securities did not disclose this mechanism to the municipalities," says Kleven in mitigation. "We are not sure whether the broker understood the mechanism himself." But so what? A lack of understanding should never get in the way of making an investment. Or so you’d guess from the professional market.

According to a survey released this week by The Economist and KPMG:

One-in-five asset managers worldwide lacks the staff needed to understand their more complex investments;
One-in-four hedge funds admits the same;
All told, one-in-three institutions now holding collateralized debt or structured products has "no in-house expertise" in understanding them.
Just 42% of fund managers reckon they can quantify their true exposure to complex investments.

Interviewing more than 330 professionals in 57 countries worldwide – and with one-third of respondents based in the United States – Beyond the Credit Crisis also found that the blow-up in credit and debt derivatives has directly dented returns at 60% of investment funds. And as a result, a huge 70% of institutional investors now want to cut their exposure to derivatives and "other complex financial products".

Yet of those managers running $10bn-plus, three-in-four say their use of such instruments is growing regardless!

Of course, "Derivatives don’t kill people; people kill people," as Frank Partnoy quotes a fellow Morgan Stanley salesman from the early ’90s in his classic book F.I.A.S.C.O. Yet even now, more than 15 years after Orange County blew up, people wielding derivatives continue to "go postal" every so often.

Just take a look at the carnage amongst under-informed, over-reaching investment funds.

"Staff skill sets have struggled to keep up with the growing sophistication of the industry," says Tom Brown, head of KPMG’s investment management division in Europe. "These firms cannot afford to continue flying blind." Flying blind worked up to summer ’07; it’s also much cheaper than training or hiring qualified staff. Quicker, too. Time is money when structured products with hidden clauses are waiting to get triggered.

But "if the fund management industry is to retain the trust of investors," reckons the KPMG-Economist survey, "it would seem imperative for it to both develop the necessary skills and then offer these skills to investors."If only! Investors right down to the retail level are going need all the same "necessary skills" they can get. Because trigger-happy derivatives are heading your way, and they’ve got a big fat marketing budget – plus the entire financial media – queued up right behind them.

"Groups are continuing to flood the market with structured products as investors seek safety from volatile markets," reports IFAonline here in the UK, a website aimed at financial advisors. Originally offering zero downside – so-called capital protection – structured products on stocks, bonds and property now come with such juicy options as:

"10 times the upside in the index with a cap at 70%..."
"positive returns even if the index falls by 35%..."
"100% of any growth between 65% of the initial reading and the closing level..."
"one-for-one downside with no guarantees or protection but an uncapped geared return of 170% of growth..."
"the greater of 0.24 times initial capital or 0.75 times the growth of the index..."

Got that? Whatever you used to think investing should taste like, it no longer needs to just come in vanilla. Starbucks’ menu of frappuccino flavorings has got nothing on Wall Street, La Defense and the City of London.

Which brings us back to multiplying Asia’s stock market gains by 230%, courtesy of Morgan Stanley UK. There’s no fee for investing in the bank’s new Asia ex-Japan Protected Growth Plan 5. (We guess here at BullionVault that means there are already four in issue.) And with the exception of a transfer charge of £100 plus VAT (approx. $230), "all other charges are taken into account in setting the terms offered," says the brochure.

Nor could you ask for better timing. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong – one half of Morgan Stanley’s basket in this plan (which then only runs to Taiwan in offering "Asia ex-Japan") – just suffered its worst month since, umm...well, since February in fact. Losing 10% of its value during the worst June in 19 years, the Hang Seng just put in its worst half-year since 2001.

That will go towards cutting your purchase price by one-fifth from New Year’s ’08. And seeing how the Hang Seng has still doubled inside five years, it’s only heading one way long term, you might guess.

But if that were the case, why on earth would Morgan Stanley want to offer you 230% of the next six years’ of growth?

"The Early Exit Basket Level is the official closing level of the Basket on 1st September 2011," explains the brochure. If this level is 30% or more above the initial starting level of Sept. ’08, then the Early Exit will be triggered and "you will be able to elect to receive an amount equal to 130% of your Initial Investment."

Bully for you! Thirty per cent up in three years, regardless of any extra gains above that level which Asia stocks might deliver. Nor did you get any capital protection in between. And if you now neglect to quit the scheme, then 30% is all you’ll get after the following three years as well.

Your growth is protected, in short, but not your capital and certainly not your upside exposure if the Early Exit is triggered. So the last thing investors in Morgan Stanley’s new Asia ex-Japan Protected Growth Plan 5 actually want is a quick bounce in Asian stocks. To get a shot at making 230% of Asia’s gains to 2014 instead, they’ll actually need sub-30% gains between now and 2011. Which might be just what they get, of course. We have nothing against Morgan Stanley’s new offer, nor the terms on which it’s made. But we are getting a head-ache trying to figure out why anyone might buy this structured product.

Like all structured investment offers, it’s clearly built from a fistful of complex derivative contracts which Morgan Stanley has bought. At least, we hope Morgans have laid off their risk with derivatives contracts...) Squeezing the new retail market for structured products ever tighter, Morgans have even raised that six-year gearing from the 200% recently offered in ex-Asia Growth Plan 4.

More gearing for you equals more risk for somebody, somewhere...and the brochure from Morgan Stanley UK is bold enough to re-state the facts more than once.

"Your money will be invested in securities issued by financial institutions with a credit rating, at the time of publication of this brochure, of A+ or better by Standard & Poor’s...In the event of these financial institutions going into liquidation or failing to comply with the terms of the securities, you may not receive the anticipated returns on your investment and you may lose all or part of the money you originally invested.

"The Plan is not a guaranteed investment," in short, which is just as it should be. Nothing is certain, least of all in investment. But you’d do well to acknowledge your counter-party and trigger risks next time you find 230% gearing attractive. Either that, or put a little of your wealth into something simple, stupid and brutally blunt.

Buying Gold doesn’t offer to pay three times Fed funds minus your sister-in-law’s birthday divided by the number you first thought of. But Gold owned outright is at least sure to sit free of counterparty and trigger risk. And that’s got to be worth buying as banks fight to bamboozle investors with a new raft of complex derivatives...even as the last derivatives bubble continues to blow up.

By arrangement wiith: www.bullionvault.com

E-mail etiquette: Hot tips

Business people send out some six trillion e-mail messages each year, according to US-based Ferris Research. That’s probably not much of a surprise to most office workers today, who have seen e-mail usurp meetings and face-to-face conversations as a primary form of communication.

What may be less obvious, however, is just how important e-mail is to your reputation. "The potential for electronic disaster is huge if you are not careful to write messages that are clean and clear," says Nancy Flynn, a US-based communications specialist and author a book on e-mail etiquette.

It’s no longer enough simply to avoid common e-mail blunders such as using all capital letters, failing to proofread your messages, or sending off a message in anger. "Careless e-mail messages," Flynn notes, "have resulted in lost productivity, financial losses...and even lawsuits."

Given the amount of e-mail that business people receive these days, it’s no treat to see a lengthy e-mail message from a business associate. E-mail is used most effectively to communicate information that would be a waste of time to convey face to face.

If what you have to say to a business colleague would occupy more than two paragraphs in an e-mail message, a phone conversation or personal meeting makes more sense. Use e-mail to save time - not to waste it.

Brevity and manners are not mutually exclusive. While you may get points for writing e-mail messages that are succinct, you’ll lose them just as quickly for coming across as rude or unpleasant. Words like "please" and "thank you" pay dividends that far exceed the effort you expend in writing them.

If you absolutely must say something unpleasant to a business colleague, do it in person or by phone. An unpleasant e-mail message hangs around and can be read over and over again.

Also, don’t be afraid to use smileys judiciously to help you convey some pleasant emotion that would give your sentences the appropriate emotional tenor.

A well-placed electronic wink or smile just might make your recipient smile when reading your message.

Whom you "copy" on an e-mail message can say as much as your e-mail message itself. Everyone knows that, too, so don’t copy someone on a message unless your primary recipient can easily understand why others are being sent a copy.

On a related note, never put people on the "cc" line in order to prod your primary recipient into taking your message more seriously.

If you write to someone, for instance, and have the person’s boss on the "cc" line in order to say to the recipient, "you need to answer this e-mail message", you’re making yourself look bad to everyone witnessing the behaviour - and you’re unlikely to be able to count your recipient as an ally in the future.

Remember that most of the time you should air grievances in person, or on the telephone, not through e-mail.

If you’re writing an e-mail message to a group of people and you would like a response from each of them, take the time to write to each of them individually rather than sending one message out to everyone at once.

You can still save time by copying the same text as the body of your message, but by e-mailing each person and placing a "Dear Claudia" or "Dear Juan" before the body of your message, your recipient will feel more compelled to answer than if he or she were just one of, say, ten people to whom the message was sent.

Remember that e-mail messages can get you into trouble - not just because of what you say but also because of how you say it. Be sensitive to language that could be construed as sexist, avoid jokes, as they could be taken the wrong way, avoid referencing sensitive subjects, such as religion or politics, be respectful, pleasant, and cooperative at all times.

In short, use your e-mail correspondence as an opportunity to make colleagues feel safe with you. If you do, you will quickly develop a good reputation and be seen as a team player. Greater productivity will ensue.