Simplifying norms for domestic funds to manage offshore pooled assets, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has dropped ‘20-25 rule’, which required a minimum of 20 investors and a cap of 25 per cent on investment by an individual, for funds from low-risk foreign investors.
As per the existing norms, a fund manager who is managing a domestic scheme, is allowed to manage an offshore fund, subject to three specific conditions.
The first requires the investment objective and asset allocation of the domestic scheme and of the offshore fund to be the same.
The second condition requires at least 70 per cent of the portfolio to be replicated across both the domestic scheme and the offshore fund.
The third condition, which was being considered as the most stringent by the industry, requires that the offshore fund should be broad-based with at least 20 investors with no single investor holding more than 25 per cent of the fund corpus.
Otherwise, a separate fund manager is required to be appointed for managing an offshore fund.
In a notification uploaded on SEBI’s website on Wednesday, the regulator said these restrictions would not apply “if the funds managed are of Category I foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) and/or Category II foreign portfolio investors which are appropriately regulated broad based funds.”
