The appointment of Gupta comes as the country’s seventh-largest asset manager looks to regain investor confidence following allegations of front-running against its former chief trader Viresh Joshi.
An email sent to Axis Mutual Fund went unanswered until Wednesday press time.
Currently, Axis Mutual does not have a CIO with Jinesh Gopani in charge of the equities team and R Sivakumar handling the fixed income team. Gupta worked with Credit Suisse for 14 years. In that stint, he shot to fame in the market and within the regulatory circles for his report titled ‘House of Debt’ in 2012 which sounded out an early warning about the high levels of debt at many of the country’s leading business groups.
This will be Gupta’s first assignment as a fund manager. Mutual fund industry watchers believe the new role will be a challenge for Gupta, who has not yet handled public money. Axis Mutual handled assets worth ₹2.48 lakh crore as on December 31, 2022.
His entry into Axis Mutual Fund comes at a time when the performance of its equity schemes has been moderate. The fund house, which follows the ‘growth’ style of investing, has seen most of its equity schemes trail its peers in the last year in the wake of the rise in interest rates and the shift in investor flavour to the ‘value’ style of investment.
Mutual fund industry officials said talk of senior appointments in Axis Mutual has been doing the rounds for the past few months. Last week, the Securities and Exchange Board of India barred Joshi and 20 other entities from the securities market for indulging in front-running activities. The market regulator alleged that Joshi passed on information of impending large trades by his employer Axis Mutual to his aides who took positions before the fund house executed the transactions.
