UTI to take stake in Captech Online

By Our Staff Correspondent

MUMBAI, SEPT. 20. The Unit Trust of India has decided to take stake in Captech Online (P) Ltd. which has promoted and is managing India's first ever fixed income and derivatives negotiating platform, `Riskexpress.com'. UTI's share in the company will be a little more than 7 per cent of the company's paid up capital.

Captech Online is a part of Soros Funds Management affiliate, The Chatterjee Group (TCG) that runs the riskxpress.com. Riskexpress.com is a negotiation platform for facilitating electronic market for trading in fixed income debt securities and offers transparent and efficient price discovery, enhanced liquidity, confidentiality and simultaneous negotiation with multiple counterparties at a time.

``This is a strategic investment for strengthening Indian debt market. This segment of the market is virtually non-existent thereby limiting the scope of efficient price and structure discovery. We are sure the platform will enhance secondary debt market liquidity and help the government, the largest issuer of fixed income securities, and the corporates to manage their liabilities better. Market dynamics in this segment of the market will help fund managers such as UTI to optimise the return generated,'' said Mr. S. K. Basu, executive director, UTI.

Captech managing director, Mr. Bikram Sen, said UTI's participation in Captech equity was an endorsement of the flexibility and capabilities of the negotiating platform. ``This would lead to more and more participants moving towards the Internet medium and particularly riskxpress.com to create the virtual market place,'' Mr. Sen said.

The platform was launched in May and has already about 100 registered users across the country. Riskexpress.com has jumped to the forefront of online debt trading in India by managing large private placement of corporate issues, which include corporates such as L&T and IDBI. This was the first time IDBI decided to launch any bond issue through the Internet and was the largest ever Indian corporate issue to have been launched through the net.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Business
Previous : Lucent, AT&T to make fresh investments
Next     : HLL launches softy kiosks