Today was the 4th India Wealth Management Conference organised by the CFA Society of India. Thanks to the CFA society for organising the seminar. I wish the attendance was better than what it was. Thanks to the sponsors SBI Mutual fund and  DSP mutual funds. Big thanks to DSP because of whom I attended the session.

It was a well organized session – some of the sessions were good and some were outstanding.

The first session – I mean apart from the Introduction…etc… was an excellent well presented session by Mr. D. Subbarao Former Governor Reserve Bank of India. He spoke well with some interpersed humor and kept the audience engaged. Good show.

Mr. Lakshminarayana Kollengode (Lan) Chief Endowment Officer, Azim Premji Foundation  was the next speaker who spoke well and gave a lot of operational details about the foundation. Well organized, and I am waiting to see the video…if the institute decides to send it to us. I seriously hope they send it to me. In case I get the video, I promise to do a blog post on that.

The next speaker was George Kinder – President Kinder Institute for Life Planning. Kinder in German means children – if I am not wrong. This man had a great attitude and spoke well about the concepts of Life planning, Mindfulness, and a Golden civilization. It was worth making the 65 km journey (to and fro). I think I should do a separate post on this. I will do so.

Uday Kotak was the next speaker and he said “this too shall pass”. Well not exactly used these words but he said “when the market is high people think it will never come down..and when it is low people think it will never go up” – both are wrong. He was optimistic about the revival happening in about 12 months time. Having said that, I do not know what stand he is taking in his bank. Would he have the guts to lend to a builder or an auto dealer? I have no clue – and I know U.K.is an amazing wealth creator – for his shareholders. So I am torn apart…but yes, UK spoke very well, and it was a good presentation. Munoth (CIO, SBI mutual fund) and current head honcho of India also handled  U K very well. Kudos.

Next was a Panel discussion on MANAGER SELECTION. There were 4 people – Geeta Kapadia, Saurabh Mukherjea, Somnath Mukherjee (last met in 2004 perhaps) who spoke well (as usual). Funny people who get expected to get paid for their services (or 5 million as salary) think that IFA should disappear. Just vanish. Somnath said so correctly that at the infancy of the industry the margins attracted the foreign banks (I am a big time beneficiary – I have done more than 100 trainings called “wealth management boot camp” – had met Somnath in Stan C in 2004/5!), and big pvt sector banks – who had tremendous income – REMEMBER WE HAD ENTRY LOADS?. So most of the growth in the MF industry was FINANCED BY THE investor…anyway that is another story.

The most humorous session was the one with 2 debt fund managers (Maneesh Dangi), Santosh Kamath, and Sunil Singhania. Another rockstar performance by these 3!

Hopefully, will do a detailed report soon…