INTERVIEW: Russia’s UralSib Asset Management to launch global ETF tools by June

Interview with UralSib Asset Management’s Chief Investment Officer Sergei Grigoryan

MOSCOW, Apr 22 (PRIME) -- Russia’s UralSib Asset Management will launch six open mutual funds that will invest in global exchange-traded funds (ETFs) by June, Chief Investment Officer Sergei Grigoryan said in an interview with PRIME on Monday.

“I think that we will manage to submit the funds’ charters to the Federal Financial Markets Service for registration before the May holidays,” Grigoryan said.

The funds will draw about 2 billion rubles in investments by the end of 2013, he said. The minimal sum of contributions enabling investors to join these mutual funds will be 10,000 rubles.

Separate funds will invest into ETFs operating with global shares, global bonds, developing markets bonds and shares, commodities indices and global real estate investors’ indices.

“We will invest into most of the liquid funds of the world’s largest market participants. Their net assets will exceed U.S. $1 billion, and the annual trade turnover is in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said.

UralSib Asset Management will also make its existing mutual funds, focusing on certain industry sectors, go global and invest in foreign companies in these sectors.

“I believe that it is better to give investors the possibility to invest in the same industry sector worldwide rather than holding (the shares of) Russian companies that are no longer attractive for investors in industry-specific funds, amid a non-liquid market with constant outflows,” Grigoryan said.

The shares of Russian companies will account for 30–50% of the mutual funds’ portfolios, he said.

“We will be the first to provide a complex service – a vast array of funds for all global asset classes,” he said.

(31.4605 rubles – U.S. $1)

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