Bangkok--7 Sep--KASIKORN ASSET MANAGEMENT
KAsset is offering ‘K-GEMO’ to invest in ‘emerging markets’ equities, focusing on flexibility of portfolio with expected dividend yields of up to 4 times per year.
Kasikorn Asset Management believes the solid economy of ‘emerging markets’ will potentially lead to high equity returns. Thus, it offers a new fund, K-GEMO, with proven portfolio management strategy that can generate decent investment return in both favorable and unfavorable market conditions. The company has joined hands with ‘Citibank’ to strengthen its mutual fund distribution channels. The IPO is upcoming and will be during September 9-21.
Mr. Rapee Sucharitakul, Executive Chairman of KASIKORN ASSET MANAGEMENT CO., LTD., said the company is offering K-Global Emerging Market Opportunities Fund (K-GEMO) with registered size of 1.5 billion Baht. The new fund will provide an alternative for investors who wish to earn higher returns from the solid economy of emerging markets with an opportunity to get dividends of up to 4 times a year. K-GEMO will invest in a Luxembourg-registered fund, Schroder International Selection Fund - Global Emerging Market Opportunities, which is a mixed fund investing in both equities and debt instruments in emerging markets , e.g. South Korea, Russia, China, Indonesia, and Turkey. The foreign fund is managed by Schroder Investment Management (Luxemburg) S.A., a world- leading asset management firm with 8 trillion Baht of assets under management and more than 200 years of experience in asset management business.
“K-GEMO’s strength is its flexibility in portfolio management that will bring about an opportunity for higher returns. The fund can invest 100 percent in equities in order to gain from economic upturn. On the other hand, it can reduce equity exposure to hold debt instruments or cash in order to reduce volatility during the market downturn. The equity portion can be reduced to as low as 40 percent, while other equity funds maintain much higher minimum equity holding. Moreover, unlike other emerging market funds, K-GEMO uses a proprietary ‘factored model’ to select the six most attractive countries to invest. Then, the fund manager team will invest in the best stocks, recommended by its on-the-ground team of emerging markets’ analysts who apply bottom-up analysis approach, in those six countries. While this strategy makes the fund’s investment less diverse than other funds, K-GEMO potentially generates higher returns from selecting the right countries and investing in the best stocks. Along with supportive economic factors from these emerging markets including high growth, strong monetary policy, and their equity bourse performance that beat stocks in developed markets by 40 percent last year, KAsset believes K-GEMO will be an attractive alternative that offers decent returns for investors”, Mr. Rapee said.
For distribution channels, Mr. Rapee added that KAsset has signed an agreement with Citibank, one of the largest full service banks in the world, to be the distributor of K-GEMO. Through its wealth management arm, Citigold is known for its disciplined sales process and rigorous product due diligence procedure. This agreement signing marks the beginning of KAsset and Citibank’s partnership in offering superior range of wealth management products to meet the evolving financial needs of Thai investors going forward.
Mr. Pradeep Pant, Country Head — Thailand Consumer Markets, Citibank N.A., said Citibank has unique breadth of market insight from our global footprint. We harness the expertise of our strategists, economists, and analysts to highlight the key themes to which we believe investors should pay attention. Our focus is on the long term themes that are expected to play out over the course of several years. We identified “Emerging Market Consumerism” as a key structural theme with material investment significance and main driver of global economic growth. “Investors looking to tap the growth pool of consumerism should focus on emerging markets”, Mr. Pradeep concluded.
Interested investors can subscribe to K-GEMO with as low as 10,000 Baht. For more information, please contact Kasikorn Asset Management, Citibank, and Private Banking Department of KASIKORNBANK, or contact KAsset Call Center 0-2673-3888.
Investments contain risk. Investors should study the prospectus before making a decision to invest.
K-Global Emerging Market Opportunities Fun (K-GEMO) is subject to foreign exchange risk of denominations of currencies in the securities it holds. The fund’s policy is to hedge against currency risk by no less than 75 percent of total foreign investment. The fund does not cover the currency risk of the entire investment amount, thus investors may see a loss or profit from foreign exchange, or get a return of less than the amount initially invested.