ICICI Pru leads CPSE ETF bid

ICICI Prudential AMC emerged as the most competitive bidder among seven fund houses to manage the second tranche of exchange traded funds (ETFs) comprising equity shares of central public sector enterprises (CPSE) and government’s holding in some private sector firms.

While the department of investment and public asset management (DIPAM) invited applications from asset management companies to manage the fund estimated to be of the size of anywhere between Rs 5,000 crore and Rs 8,000 crore, seven fund houses had submitted their bids and according to the bid results announced by DIPAM on Wednesday, ICICI Prudential obtained the highest total score of 89.65 (weighted average of technical and financial bid).

Industry insiders said that ICICI Prudential AMC emerged as the lowest bidder as a result of its financial bid of 0.0095 per cent. The second best financial bid was from SBI AMC as it made a bid to manage the fund at 0.063 per cent. While Reliance AMC placed a bid to manage the fund at 0.065 per cent, HDFC AMC placed a bid of 0.1 per cent. The other three bidders were UTI AMC, Birla Sun Life AMC and Kotak AMC.

By the virtue of its significantly low financial bid, ICICI Prudential scored 89.65 to emerge as the front-runner in the bids. SBI AMC stood second with a total score of 74.5.