What exactly is the rejig and who could be helming the investment affairs at Sundaram MF ?
Mr Krishna Kumar who was the CIO Equity and had been with us for about 17 years, has expressed a desire to move on and do something on his own. He told us this sometime ago and we are comfortable with that decision. We have launched a search for replacement in the market and we would look at candidates both internal and external in the process. This comes in the right juncture for us because we have announced the Principal acquisition and we are waiting for regulatory clearances.
Fresh blood coming to head the equities will help the transition from primarily a mid and small cap fund house into a much more broad spectrum large, mid, small — all market capitalisation curve. So, we will be shortly identifying and announcing a new replacement to take over.
What happens in the interim until you find new talent to take over?
I mentioned that we are launching a talent search for the role of the CIO. As for the funds that Krishna Kumar managed, we have already transitioned them to capable people within our own team. We are now looking for a CIO to come and oversee the platform but individual fund management is already in very capable hands and that transition has already happened.
Currently, how would you ensure that the new CIO’s vision and investment strategies are in line with the individual fund managers as well?
We have a vision and strategy for Sundaram Mutual. So what we would look for in a candidate is a person who can help us carry that forward and help us scale. With the Principal acquisition, we should be about Rs 50,000 crore in size and we are looking to make the journey from Rs 50,000 crore to a Rs 100,000 crore company over the next three to four years. What we are looking for is a candidate who has to be a cultural fit with the values of Sundaram — trust, integrity and honesty. Secondly, it has to be somebody with the vision to scale us up. We would also look for a much more broad-based fund manager.
We are interviewing quite a few people and so hopefully in the next few weeks, we will be in a position to make a decision and announce it. It is more about the candidate fitting our culture. There are enough experienced resources in the industry — both internal and external — who will be evaluated in the interviewing process.
And whoever takes over has to maintain that consistency as well for the benefit of your mutual fund holders?
Absolutely. We are a very process driven organisation. We have a strong research process and we are very clear how we identify new stocks, how they get added, what is the limit that we set, how to weight benchmark underweight versus a benchmark. We are very process driven. We feel that any new person coming in as long as he is a cultural fit will be able to smoothly fit into the framework and largely that is what we have tried to do. Krishna Kumar was a great help to us in putting forth a process driven framework. As far as the core fund management philosophies are concerned, Sundaram remains Sundaram. It sticks to its core values of unearthing opportunities and delivering value to investors. Nothing changes there. Investors and partners and distributors can rest assured that our consistency of fund management process will remain integrated and intact.
