Samir Arora, Head - Asian Emerging Markets of Alliance Capital Asset Management has quit the AMC and will leave it in September. Arora will now be associated with Sabre Capital's mutual fund business in India. He is also likely to have a stake in the Indian AMC of Sabre Capital.
Arora has been associated with Alliance Capital since its start in India in 1995 and was fund manager for all of Alliance Capital's equity and balanced schemes including its offshore fund. Arora's management style could best be described as passionate—he pursued the highs and lows with equal vigour. As a result his funds were at the top of the heap in the years leading up to 2000. The AMC's flagship fund Alliance 95, a balanced fund, at its peak outperformed a good number of diversified equity schemes. In 1999 it generated an astounding 179.7 per cent.
When markets fell in 2000 the funds diversified equity, tax saving and balanced schemes managed to hold on to their first quartile status. Alliance Equity however slipped into the bottom quartile of its category in both 2001 and 2002 and also underperformed its benchmark, the BSE 200 in both these years. Alliance 95, while faring slightly better found its way into the third quartile of its category in both these years. Alliance Taxsaver managed to do better, hanging on in the second quartile in the last two calendar years.
Arora will also be remembered for the passion with which he pursued IT stocks. In recent years as there was no clear sector leading the intermittent rallies, his funds could not do so well. The bear market of recent years has thus claimed its second victim. The first—another fund manager of equally strong convictions—Bharat Shah, quit Birla AMC in late 2002.
Meanwhile Alliance Capital has appointed Rajnish Narula as the new CEO of the Indian arm of Alliance Capital. Narula is currently head of investment services at Standard Chartered Bank.
Ask Value Research 
New episodes every Friday 
New Process Alert 
Seems like you've uploaded a wrong QR code. Please upload the QR code downloaded from MF Central platform.
