India’s second largest fund manager ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund increased its stake in select PSUs and bluest of blue chips including Reliance Industries, Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys in May when the benchmark equity index BSE Sensex gained nearly 6.50% during the month.
Data available with Ace Mutual Fund showed that the money manager bought additional over 1 crore shares each in Oil & Natural Gas Corporation and Punjab National Bank.
Commenting on the present market scenario and available investment options, Sankaran Naren, Chief Investment Officer, ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company said, “We think most of the cyclical sectors represent good value till the central banks tighten monetary policy. Within defensive sectors, pharma and IT represent relatively better value compared to consumer sectors.”
Some other biggest bets of the ICICI Prudential investment team, lead by market veteran Naren, during the month were in the telecom, insurance, pharmaceutical and FMCG sector. The fund house bought over 10 lakh shares each in Bharti Airtel, SBI Life Insurance Company, Sun Pharmaceutical, Coal India, Zee Entertainment, Ashok Leyland, IDFC First Bank, HCL Technologies, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, Larsen & Toubro, Infosys, ITC and YES Bank.
Among the other index heavyweights, ICICI Prudential bought over 20 lakh shares in Reliance Industries and 16,856 shares of Tata Consultancy Services during the month.
On the sell side, ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company cut some stake in Bank of Baroda, Indian Oil Corporation, Vedanta, NTPC, Tata Power Company, IDFC GMR Infra and The South Indian Bank.
It completely exited companies like Astra Microwave, Easy Trip Planners, Indian Metals & Ferro Alloys and Texmaco Rail. Voltamp Transformers was among the stock the fund house entered afresh, the data showed.
Published: June 12, 2021, 17:24 IST
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