Malaysia's biggest private unit trust company, Public Mutual, is due to launch its new fund, the Public Islamic Savings fund.
The fund is targeted at Malaysian domestic investors and will invest up to 30% of NAV in Shari'ah compliant equities in selected foreign markets including Singapore, South Korea, and Luxembourg. It will allocate between 75% and 98% of NAV to equities and Sukuk with the balance invested in liquid assets including Islamic money market instruments.
PM said it is targeting a portfolio of Shari'ah compliant blue chip and growth stocks as well as stocks that are currently undervalued due to the market's macroeconomic concerns over the fragile global economic picture.
Speaking to The Islamic Globe one of PM's distribution agents said he was confident the new fund will perform well considering it would follow the same mandate and investment strategy as its conventional counterpart the $379.1m Public Savings fund. This was launched in 1981 and had a 10-year total return of 191.4% to the end of September 2011. By comparison PM's oldest Islamic fund, the Malaysia-biased Asia Pacific including Japan equity fund, the $870m Public Ittikal fund, launched in 1987, had a 10-year total return of 171.61% to the end of end September 2011.
For the initial offer period ending December 30, 2011 the new closed-ended fund is priced at RM0.25 ($0.08) per unit with a minimum initial investment of RM1000 ($315). The total fund size is 1.5bn units.
Public Mutual manages 91 funds with a total NAV of RM43.7bn ($13.7bn).
© The Islamic Globe 2011
