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New Star

Type: New Star Indian Equity fund

Description: The launch of the New Star Indian Equity Fund is the latest step in the expansion of New Star's retail emerging markets range and aims to achieve medium-to-long-term capital growth from a well diversified portfolio of Indian equities with a predominantly large cap bias. Until 27 June there is a discount rate of 1 per cent off the 5 per cent initial charge. To benefit from local knowledge and expertise, New Star will make investments through Mumbai-based asset management subsidiary of the Tata Group. TAML will provide non-binding, non-exclusive investment advice. The minimum investment is £3500 and the maximum top-up sum is £500. Approximately 40 stocks will be held in US dollar currency and the portfolio will be diversified into 16 different sectors, the greatest allocation being to industrial capital goods - 11 per cent.

Conditions: This investment cannot be held within an Isa wrapper. This is a Luxembourg SICAV. Any income available for distribution will be automatically reinvested to purchase further shares.

Contact: www.newstaram.com

VERDICT

India has been a "hot" investment region for some time and its GDP is expected to continue growing substantially over the coming two to three years. The fact that India is not reliant on foreign investment makes it very attractive, as their continued emergence of new wealth internally from consumers and companies. Also, half of the population is under 30 years old, fuelling the expectation of sustained organic growth.

The partnership with Tata makes sense as Tata has a real presence domestically and should provide great knowledge, particularly on the industrial and infrastructure stock picks. The SICAV structure is no surprise because the manager can work cross-border and it is open-ended, and the charges are representative of other similar funds. All in all, if this fund matches a client's risk and return profile, this looks to be a promising fund.

four stars