Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Hybrid Dividends? In Mutual Funds?

Hybrid Dividends? In Mutual Funds?

Ganga Prasad Rao
gangaprasad.rao@gmail.com
http://myprofile.cos.com/gangar



SEBI recently came out with a ruling that mutual funds may only distribute the 'surplus' appreciation over an arbitrarily-defined benchmark NAV - the NAV of the previous dividend declaration. This has been widely hailed as a financially prudent step in the 'left' direction. It limits the practice of mutual funds garnering fresh subscriptions by declaring large dividends that eat in to the NAV and the networth of existing investors. But it is also a 'retrograde' policy that steps on the toes of the fund managers' freedom who are limited in their decisions concerning the timing and quantum of dividends. The policy also punishes the small investor in funds that declare small dividends just ahead of a big market crash. With another market crash in the offing (hopefully not!), and with the coffers of the 'Investor Education and Protection Fund' overflowing, ain't it the right time to consider, even propose, an alternative?

The proposal is not unlike an inverse-analog of the 'auto-pay' option offered at select fund houses. Under the 'auto-pay' the NAV of the mutual fund holds but the number of units is reduced to issue the dividend; the proposed dividend payout-variant holds the number of units constant, but varies the NAV to accommodate individual dividend needs. The proposal is implemented by conceptualizing a 'hybrid' structure for a mutual fund - a fund that is both open and closed. Open in the sense that investors may make fresh purchases, and closed in the sense that investors may not redeem units. Instead, investors elect to receive differential dividend payouts. The trick behind 'differential dividend payouts' is to declare a 'base rate' of dividend applicable to all investors invested in the 'dividend payout' option, and then permit every investor in the 'differential-payout' option to receive dividend at some multiple or fraction of the declared base rate. Each investor in the payout option will have the right to periodically re-set his dividend 'beta' (the update taking effect a week later/month-end to preclude dividend anticipation, though and given the intent of the proposal, one could argue against such limitation. The fund house would also place restrictions on the number of switches permitted in a year and the minimum balance to be maintained, but those issues have ready solutions.). Since investors differ with respect to their risk-apetite and their view of the market, the mechanism to set a investor-specific dividend-payout rate facilitates participatory-, risk-based decision-making by individual investors that is lacking in the mutual fund market. Fund managers may breathe a tad easier with their decisions concerning the timing and quantum of dividends, comforted by the knowledge investors now have an option to tune their dividend-payout 'betas' to personal preferences, risk-apetite and view of the market.

An illustration would be useful. Assume two investors - one with a higher risk apetite and a long-view of the market, and the other - either a resource-constrained investor and/or with a lower risk-apetite and/or a short-view of the market, invest 1000 units in a Mutual Fund IPO issued at Rs 10 in the dividend payout option. Investor A opts for a dividend payout at half the 'base rate' declared by the fund, while Investor B opts to receive dividend at twice the base rate. When the fund house declares a dividend of Rs 2 on the fund's NAV appreciating to Rs 15, Investor A receives Rs 1000 as his dividend, and Investor B, Rs 4000. The NAVs for the two individuals diverge from that point from Rs 13, the 'benchmark' NAV for the fund. One could fault the proposal for the incremental cost of computing a investor-specific NAVs and dividend payouts, but in these days of gazillion-Hz supercomputing and FIIs and fund houses profiting from every paise of arbitrage, computing investor-specific NAVs - as is prevalent in retirement basket investments - is no hassle at all.

There are definite efficiency advantages to this system. The fund could be closed for the long term - a decade or more, permitting it to be positioned as an 'endowment' or 'lifetime' fund, and thus garnering a share of the inter-generational wealth-planning market. The freedom to vary one's 'payout-beta' even while permitting the fund manager to decide the timing of the dividend declaration is a strategy that optimizes individual preferences with 'group-decisions' (since the fund manager is better-informed, 'better-positioned, and invests for the group). Further, and since investors may change their personal dividend-payout 'beta', the hybrid scheme permits, on one hand, the 'resource-constrained' investor, and on the other, the wealthy and more aware investor to exploit the fund manager's wisdom to one's advantage without playing the 'invest and redeem' cycle - a strategy that has been the downfall of many small investors. The former appreciates the freedom to take a large lump-sum dividend in a year of his or her need by increasing the 'payout-beta', even while the latter - a higher-risk apetite, long-investor - 'goes against the grain' and chooses to bank rather than bleed his dividends in an 'up' year.

This brings us to the question of the investor-composition of these funds and how it affects the fund manager's dividend declarations. Is the fund manager more answerable to the mass of small investors who constitute 95% of the fund members, or to the handful of large investors who constitute 50% or more of the fund's assets? If the former, the manager is likely to declare frequent, if small dividends. If latter, the dividends are likely to be infrequent and strategic (as at the verge of the end of a long bull-run). Now, there are those other issues, notably the tax treatment of 'hybrid dividends' when an individual's dividend erodes in to his invested capital. Also, and truth be said, large investors, with the 'inside' on the stock market, are likely to exploit the features of this scheme to their advantage, but that is as much a problem with the existing system.

A little bit of extra 'wiggle-room' for the fund manager and the hapless small investor won't do any harm to the market, would it? I don't think so. Whatchabouju?

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Closed Cycle Economy - Miracle or Myth?

Closed-Cycle Economy - Miracle or Myth?

Ganga Prasad Rao
http://myprofile.cos.com/gangar



If the 9/11s of the world have taught us anything, it is that the human society, ultimately fails not for lack of technology or efficiency, but for equity and enviromental sustainability. Not that economists or sociologists did not anticipate it. Infact, and to the contrary, many have espoused such concepts as a 'closed cycle economy' or a 'technology-driven rama rajya'. So what stands between our egalitarian dreams and the wretched reality - the veritable 'closed-cycle cup and leap'? Greed-based economic systems coupled to 'beggar-thy-neighbor' competition? 'Subsidy-based satisfice-the-voter' economies coupled to 'feed-on-the-growth, forage on the recession' stock markets? or 'Foul the commons and pass the buck' syndrome? Ace, YES, and Sssshhh!

Industrial economists have long espoused the 'closed-cycle economy' - an ideal system in which the society comprising the industry and consumers recycles what it produces/consumes in to new products so the economy need not scour the earth to mine minerals and fill it with unsorted garbage, pollute the air, or turn the oceans of the world so thick with effluents that fishes would rather jump in to the nets and on to your dinner plates than swim merrily in their school! Honestly, the recycling technology is already here. After all, we do recycle metals, bottles, paper and even plastics. The story, however, is in what we do not recycle. And therein lies the problem. How do we get the industry to recycle what they do not find economic to recycle?

One could always tax the polluting activity or subsidise recycling or both. Perhaps that explains the variation in the degree of recycling across economies of the world. But are we willing to tax ourselves to the point that the industry finds it profitable to 'close' its production cycle, even if that means doubling or tripling prices? More to the point, is that the only way out? Perhaps not. If the motive is merely to induce producers and consumers to adopt a certain practice as a profit-maximizing or cost-minimizing alternative, the same can be arranged in a myriad ways. One of those ways is to reward producers, consumers and investors in the stock market. But how?

Since the capital markets around the world are a 'common meeting ground' for producers, consumers and investors alike, (and since in a trade-driven world, the higher cost of closed-cycle production is likely to favor the 'Archaean economy'), it'd be prudent to introduce closed-cycle policies thru the global capital markets so they apply equally to all participants - regardless of which part of the world they are in, what industry or investor they represent. But what form do these incentives take? Who'd pay and why? As the trustees of the global environment, the UNEP, the GEF, the Greenpeace and the WWF would be the sponsors of a system that incentivizes 'closed-cycle' scrips at the stock market with a formula-based valuation upgrade. The formula would require these sponsors to support 'green' scips at a premium determined by their 'degree of closure'. The 'degree of closure' would be an internationally agreed-upon construct that draws upon company-level data on material balances, environmental releases and product attributes to compute a single measure of environmental sustainability (Call it a 'Closed Cycle Sustainability (CCS) index', if you like). The index would be a broad-based construct that subsumes such concepts as degree of recyclability/recycling, environmental degradability/half-life, toxicity, dispersion potential and so on.

For instance, a publicly-listed firm that completely internalizes its environmental releases and recycles its products - whether in its own network or thru the market - would be eligible for a 100% up-grade in its P/E or PEEG. You may wonder what incentives the sponsors have beyond their immediate charter to safeguard the environment. But these are the very same institutions that pay for your oil spills, plastic cleanup in the oceans, remove old cars from the roads, and sponsor 'garbage hunts' along the Himalayan mountaineering routes. It'd stand to reason that their investments in the capital markets, over a period of time, tilt the balance in favor of a environmentally sustainable, closed-cycle economy, and the same results in reduced cost to them over the long term. Stock market participants, looking for returns, would naturally favor those firms and industries with high sustainability index. In turn, these favored firms, finding capital easy to come, would expand at the expense of the 'archaean dinosaurs', and increase the penetration (or the market share) of the closed-cycle economyo. And we would slowly but surely converge to a 'closed- and environmentally-sustainable economy', avoiding along the way, the 'price-hiccups' under a pigouvian tax regime, and the well-known problems of a subsidy regime.

Now if only one could find a way for consumers to favor healthy foods over unhealthy foods in an analogous way (and subscribe to a system of equity driven by a universal scale of character and virtuosity).

Plastic waste recycled to fibre-rich popcorn at prices appropriate to your 'rank' on the virtuosity ladder!

Rama Rajya, Here we come !