I do attend mutual fund / life insurance meets and conclaves – but very rarely. So when I was accepting Mitra Joshi’s invite for the Mutual fund conclave, I was not sure whether I would go, but I did go yesterday. This was held at Softel Mumbai – the one at BKC.

Let me first tell you what all I liked at the conclave. I liked the CIO panel and the CEO panel for the group discussion. It does not get better than this.

I liked the fact that I met a lot of people – including one young girl whom I had met about 14 years ago. She is now a famous, and well known editor or Mint, Monica Halan. It was nice meeting her after such a long time. If Mitra had not called me I would have missed that.

When the CIOs were busy defending the 2 year close ended and the 3 year close ended funds, I like Prashant saying that Equity as a wealth creation takes much more time.

I have got tired telling people that equity creates wealth over decades or even generations. So I liked Prashant’s bluntness of saying “I may see some marketing sense…but not a fund management sense in the close ended 3 year equity fund.

Agree 1000%with Prashant Jain.

I liked Santosh Kamath saying ‘Arbitrage must end’ – makes sense right? by definition arbitrage should end. Also if you do a debt transaction but just call it equity, you are being wrong. I fully agree that if you break the spirit of the law you will get into trouble. When dividends became tax free we came with daily dividend plans. When FMP was launched and it took so much money from the banking system – that was made taxable for sub 3 years. Santosh led the team well.

I liked Nilesh Shah (the original Templeton guy who transited through Icici Pru and Axis) and is currently with Kotak.

Nilesh said ‘My employees will invest in my schemes – or how will he sell?

the whole ambience was nice, the room was nice, food was nice, arrangements were nice, panel was big and good …

More feedback tomorrow?