More than Rs 766 crore of retail money was invested in ill-fated Satyam Computer through 120 mutual fund schemes in November 2008. As of November 30,of the 32 mutual fund houses,Fidelity Mutual Fund had the highest percentage of its investments (2.17 per cent) in this scrip. In absolute terms,UTI Mutual Fund had the highest amount invested in the scrip at Rs 175.40 crore. Second in line is Fidelity Mutual Fund with an investment of over Rs 126.16 crore in its four schemes. According to the data available at Valueresearchonline.com,in November,information technology funds had made a total investment of Rs 23.65 crore and non-IT funds invested a tad more than Rs 728 crore in Satyam. "While there were no hot favourite sectors last year,rupee depreciating made IT stocks quite attractive for the portfolio. A lot of mutual funds reallocated their funds to this space during the last few months of 2008. Satyam,supported with strong PE multiple projections,was among the preferred stock picks of the fund managers. A significant amount was pumped into this stock," said a senior official in the industry requesting anonymity. Besides making dents into the portfolios of actively managed funds,the latest bust will also badly hit passive funds (index funds). Index funds,considered as the best bets among mutual funds,mirror the composition of a standard market index (such as Nifty or Sensex) and invest in scrips in the same proportion as that in the index. Therefore,such funds yield returns that more or less mirror the returns generated by the index. Satyam computer had weightage of more than 1.12 per cent in 30-share BSE benchmark index in October. However,this percentage has withered to meagre 0.38 per cent in the last two days and put Satyam scrip at the bottom of the ladder.
