Malaysia's CIMB Wins Approval To Increase Equity Fund

Vanessa Doctor

19 November 2009

Malaysia's CIMB-Principal Asset Management Berhad has received approval from the Securities Commission to increase the size of its CIMB Islamic DALI Equity Theme Fund from 2 billion units to 2.2 billion.

The move is in line with growing demand for Islamic products, which have proven themselves relatively resilient at the height of the global financial crisis.

In a statement, key distributor CIMB Wealth Advisors said that the high interest in the fund is due to its sector diversification, which provides investors with medium to long term capital appreciation by investing in domestic securities according to prevailing investment themes. At present, choice investments run around the likes of oil, gas and manufacturing.

"This fund size increase is timely as we have increasing demands from investors who are keen to add domestic equities to their portfolio as part of their core asset allocation strategy," said Tan Beng Wah, the chief executive officer of CIMB Wealth Advisors.

The announcement came with the official declaration of income distributions for its CIMB-Principal Equity Fund 2 and its CIMB-Principal Equity Growth Fund.

As of 30 September, the gross distribution for CIMB-Principal Equity Fund 2 was 5.00 sen per unit, which translates to a 6.41 per cent yield. The Equity Growth Fund also gave a 5.00 sen per unit distribution, amounting to a 10.49 per cent yield. The former primarily deals with stocks from the banking, plantation and construction industries, while the latter deals with equities with some foreign exposure.

CIMB-Principal Asset Management is one of the largest asset management companies in Malaysia.