Fixing UTI, fixing FDI

Like a melodramatic tragedy film, UTI Asset Management Company is dying a slow death. The decline in its rank in the list of 44 mutual funds does not even begin to tell the extent of its problems, though that it why it is ostensibly looking to appoint an interim CEO while its shareholders continue to fight over whether a professional CEO should be appointed or whether one favoured by the finance ministry should be anointed. UTI AMC owed its pre-eminence to its reach in small towns which made it almost synonymous with mutual fund exposure for the India beyond the metros—in 2003, it had around 90,000 agents compared to less than 50,000 for the rest of the industry.

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