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Published on December 14, 2007

It will be the first balance fund to invest in a foreign feeder fund, he said.

The market for tax-exempt funds, such as long-term equity and retirement funds, has somewhat matured, and it is mostly high-paid executives and those who are about to retire who buy them, he said.

A global retirement balance fund, with equal weightings in equity, debt and cash, would answer this particular group's long-term needs, he said.

He hinted that the Standard & Poor's-rated five-star fund, to be released in the middle or end of next year, has been generating about an 8-per-cent annual return for several decades.

Its portfolio of five foreign investment funds alone has grown from Bt1 billion earlier this year to Bt5.6 billion.

This has been a good year for Thanachart Fund Manage-ment. Riding on the wave of low interest rates, assets under management have grown 68.75 per cent, from last year's Bt48 billion to Bt81 billion, CEO Suchada Pavananunt said. And they are likely to reach Bt120 billion next year.

And because of the low interest rates, the Thanachart Cash Management Fund has ballooned from Bt2.5 billion to Bt25 billion, because people flocked to higher returns around the second and third quarters of this year.

Suchada said investors were drawn to the fund's liquidity. Because of its popularity and the demand for a shorter return period, the firm will set up a new money-market fund next year with a six-month period.

The company's growth reflects the expansion of Thanachart Bank's nationwide branch network to 160, which is expected to reach 200 next year. But not every branch can sell funds, since some have yet to acquire licences.

But Thanachart Fund is cautious when it comes to next year's prospects, Suchada said. The two main unknowns are global volatility, because the sub-prime crisis seems to be spiralling downward, and the new Deposit Insurance Agency, which can determine the flow of money from savings to funds.

Ki Nan Tsui

 The Nation