I am small time retail investor, invested Rs. 50000/- to “FMCG Fund-Growth” of Franklin Templeton on 22/07/2011. Surprisingly, on 14/09/2011, I received a mail stating my amount has been transferred to another fund viz. “Prima Plus” fund. Later I found, only Rs 48494.81/- out of investment of Rs. 50000/- was transferred to new fund. When contacted, I was informed that they have done this as they have merged two of their funds with SEBI permission and they claimed, that this was informed to me (never received any letter). I wrote to their top management viz. Mr. Sukumar Rajah and Mr. Vivek Kudva protesting this action resulting a loss of investment, as I was made investment for longtime goal and was not ready to lose any money due to early withdrawal. But they chose to ignore my complaints and their customer care sent an email explaining why they merged the funds and why they transferred my investment without my consent. While doing this, they sent me a back dated letter (dated 29th July delivered to me on 26th November) to cover-up their crime. In that letter the merger was informed and given option to withdraw investment without any exit load. If somebody doesn’t response (like me) that will be taken as consent and they will arbitrarily transfer investment. Recently I lodged complaint to SEBI. But Franklin Templeton replied that they have done everything as per SEBI permission and denied that they have dispatched back dated letter to cover up. It seems there is an unholy alliance between this company and some officials of SEBI to rob common investors.

Since this was their decision to merge the funds due to administrative or other benefit, why investor will suffer for their action? They are only fund manager and not owner, how SEBI give permission to a fund company to merge funds without investor’s consent particularly when the NAV is at lowest? This is a clear case of looting the investor’s in connivance with SEBI. I appeal to general investors NOT TO MAKE ANY INVESTMENT IN FRAKLIN TEMPLETON MUTUAL FUND and lose money like me. I wrote to CRISIL to downgrade rating of this fund house as risk of investor is greatest here.