When Funds Merge

Mutual fund schemes are vanishing. Nothing sinister—it’s just that fund companies are merging some schemes into others at a far higher pace than they used to. In the first seven months of 2011, as many as 41 funds have been merged into another one. During the previous three years put together, this number was just 37. In fact, in the five years from 2006 to 2010, there were a total of 58 fund mergers. On current trends, 2011 could comfortably exceed this number. On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with this. These fund mergers are obviously done with regulator SEBI’ permission and follow all the rules and regulations that have been put in place for investors’ protection. However, fund mergers are an unfamiliar subject for most investor

This article was originally published on August 29, 2011.