The Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) contagion is spreading. After mutual funds and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), it is the turn of the exempt pension funds to be worried about their investment in bonds from the beleaguered institution. The story is: as non-performing asset-laden banks dried up lending to firms, these companies turned to other sources of money as a firm needs working capital to keep the wheels of business turning. Money comes from two sources—extra funds that other firms have and household savings. Institutions such as banks, mutual funds, insurance firms, pension funds, and NBFCs act as intermediaries between households, who are the lenders, and firms who are borrowers. In the IL&FS case, there are bonds that have not kept to the interest payment schedule and were, thus, classified as below investment-grade by credit rating firms. Once that happened, the exposure to such bonds held by mutual funds came to light. Next came the exposure of NBFCs to these bonds.
One comment
sambiblogger
February 16, 2019 at 9:51 pm
Hi Monika, Could you suggest a CFP in Bangalore who can assist in personal finance management. Your book “let’s talk money” is quite inspiring and I want to take my 1st steps