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    Franklin Templeton lays off 20 employees

    Synopsis

    In response to an email query, a Franklin spokesperson told ET, “These departures are the result of restructuring in our local distribution and allied teams to ensure that we are efficiently organised and resourced to create a sustainable organisation positioned for long-term growth.”

    6Agencies
    MUMBAI: Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund has asked 20 of its employees to leave the firm with the fund house under fire for shutting down six of its debt schemes and under-performance of some of its top equity schemes. The laid-off executives were mostly part of sales, including cluster heads and relationship managers, said sources. The lay-offs at Franklin could be one of the biggest by an asset manager in the domestic mutual fund industry in recent years.

    In response to an email query, a Franklin spokesperson told ET, “These departures are the result of restructuring in our local distribution and allied teams to ensure that we are efficiently organised and resourced to create a sustainable organisation positioned for long-term growth.”

    Franklin’s reputation among investors and investment advisors took a hit after the fund house on April 23 decided to wind down six debt schemes, which manage assets worth Rs 26,000 crore, putting redemptions on hold indefinitely. With a section of investors dragging Franklin to court, uncertainty over when the money would be returned remains.

    Franklin’s sales team has struggled to sell the product on account of the debt scheme fiasco. Mutual fund distributors said the modest performance of equity schemes too have hit flows.

    “After Franklin Templeton shut six of its debt mutual fund schemes, investor confidence on products from the fund house is low. Equity schemes have also underperformed the benchmark indices,” says Viral Bhatt, founder, Money Mantra, a Mumbai-based distributor.

    Gets Rs 1,078 cr from maturities
    The six shuttered schemes of Franklin Templeton have received Rs 1,078 crore from maturities, pre-payments and coupon payments during the period September 16-30, 2020. This takes the total cash flows received till date since April 24, 2020 to Rs 8,262 crore.
    The Economic Times

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