Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund apologizes to SEBI unconditionally

Mumbai, May 08, 2020, Friday
Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund's unconditional apology from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) over a statement made by a senior Mutual Fund official about the change in SEBI norms and regulations to wind up its debt fund scheme.
Jenny Johnson, president and CEO of Franklin Templeton, was quoted by the media before apologizing to SEBI, the fund house claimed. In a notice, the Fund House said, "We apologize for this unintentional statement and we have the highest respect for the esteemed SEBI and we apologize unconditionally to SEBI for this."
It is worth mentioning here that, in some media outlets in India, Johnson was presented with a summary of his response out of the issue, Franklin added. In headlines and articles, Johnson was quoted as saying that guidelines for unlisted securities were the main reason for summing up his scheme. Which is not really true or even reinforced by the comments made during the conference call.
Johnson had issued a statement by Sebi stating the 10 per cent investment limit of Skimo's corpus in unlisted non-convertible debentures (NCDs). In a conference call last week, the president and CEO of Franklin Templeton said that after the circular, 5 per cent of the funds became orphans and trading in these unlisted NCDs could not take place. In India, a rating below the Triple A rating is considered a non-investment grade.
With this said, the high yield market has not matured here yet. So we have big funds, which are actually 3 funds investing in this type of private debt. Unfortunately, in October 2016, SEBI issued a new guideline stating that no investment in unlisted instruments should exceed 10 per cent of the fund. This was noted by Johnson in a specific perspective, the fund house said.
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