Five fund managers ICICI Pru AMC,HSBC AMC,Reliance Capital,ICICI Securities and SBI have been shortlisted by the selection committee of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) to manage the R3.5 lakh crore corpus. The name of five shortlisted fund managers would be placed before the Central Board of Trustees to take a final call on Thursday, a source privy to the development told FE. He further said the names were selected after financial and technical biddings. Last month,the CBT headed by the labour minister,had decided to extend the time line for appointment of fund managers to August 31. EPFO also roped in rating agency Crisil to help it in the selection process. The term of the four fund managers,including ICICI Pru AMC,HSBC AMC,Reliance Capital and SBI had expired on March 31 this year. Besides the four AMCs who had managed the EPFO corpus,six new firms had evinced interest in managing the retirement fund managers corpus. The term of the new fund managers would be of three years. The six firms are Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Company,Securities Trading Corporation of India,UTI Asset Management Company,Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company,ICICI Securities Primary Dealership and Franklin Templeton Asset Management (India). Giving reasonable time for submitting technical and financial bids,the EPFO had asked the 10 AMCs last month,who had earlier evinced interest in managing its funds,to submit their bids by June 24. The body had engaged the four assets management firms from September 17 in 2008 to March 31,2011,with a view to improve the yield on its investments so that it could provide better returns on PF deposits to its over 4.72 crore subscribers. Before the appointment of these four asset management companies (AMCs),SBI was the sole fund manager for the EPFO since the retirement fund bodys inception in 1952. For the two-and-half year period ended March 31 2011,ICICI Prudential provided the best yield on investments made on behalf of the retirement fund body EPFO,while Reliance Capital gave lowest rate of returns. The investments made by ICICI Pru yielded returns of 8.72% followed by HSBC AMC (8.64%) and SBI (8.61%).
