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Mukesh shows Reliance on Anil, parks Rs 800 cr cash in bro’s MFs

Flush with billions of dollars in cash, Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has parked more than Rs 800 crore in various mutual fund schemes of younger sibling Anil-led Reliance Group.

RIL has made these investments, totalling over Rs 800 crore, mostly in the Fixed Maturity Plans and other debt schemes of Reliance Mutual Fund, market sources said.

Reliance MF is part of Anil Ambani-led group's financial services arm Reliance Capital Ltd.

Incidentally, RIL and Anil Ambani group on Tuesday announced their first business partnership since a bitter family split in 2005. The two groups have agreed to share optic fibre cables and other telecom infrastructure including telecommunications towers for their respective ventures, Reliance Jio Infocomm and RCOM in a Rs 1,200-crore deal.

The two groups, which about three years ago had scrapped a non-compete agreement between them, have now also agreed for a comprehensive framework of business cooperation.

RIL's investment in Reliance MF schemes, which has been made over a period of last eight months, comes as a clear departure of the oil-to-retail conglomerate's earlier stance of parking surplus funds into almost all the mutual funds, expect on those run by the Anil Ambani-led group.

At the end of fiscal 2011-12 ended 31 March 2012, RIL had invested over Rs 8,700 crore in various mutual fund schemes, including Fixed Maturity Plans (FMPs), but they did not include any scheme of Reliance MF. In contrast, RIL has always figured prominently in the stock portfolios of various schemes of Reliance Mutual Fund. At least 13 schemes of Reliance Mutual Fund had RIL as one of the biggest stock in their respective portfolios as on March 31, 2012 and together these funds held RIL shares worth well above Rs 500 crore.

According to market sources, there was a clear change in RIL's investment strategy in the last fiscal 2012-13 in terms of deployment of excess cash in mutual funds. RIL holds one of the biggest cash balance among all the corporates in the country.
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