BT blames takeover fallout for inflow blues

Bankers Trust (BT) has suffered its lowest quarterly net inflow to its Australian retail unit trusts in two years during the March 1999 quarter, according to Morningstar's latest retail managed investment market share figures.

Bankers Trust (BT) has suffered its lowest quarterly net inflow to its Austra-lian retail unit trusts in two years during the March 1999 quarter, according to Morningstar's latest retail managed investment market share figures.

Morningstar says BT Funds Management (BTFM) attracted only $11 million in net new monies in the three months to end-March.

Its figures, however, differ markedly from those of competing research group AS-SIRT, which show a net inflow of $228.5 million for BTFM in the March quarter - a rise from $185.6 million the previous quarter.

BTFM head of sales and marketing Rob Coombe says: "It is not for us to comment on the discrepancies. The flows have been positive, so they both got it right.

"We're very happy with the situation given the six months of uncertainty we've been through and we expect things to be resolved in two to three weeks time. To tell you the truth, we actually thought that the situation would be worse than it is."

Coombe concedes that BTFM has lost market share, but says this is not surpris-ing, given that half the research groups slapped "hold" notices on it after news broke that Deutsche Bank had put it up for sale.

Meanwhile, Commonwealth Financial Services has topped the ASSIRT's quarterly in-flow tables for the fourth time in a row, even though its March inflows were lower than the $663.1 million reported for the December quarter.

Newcomers to the top 10 this quarter are Colonial and Perpetual while Lend Lease's quarterly inflows jumped from $169.2 million in December to $324.7 mil-lion in March.

Ends