In India, a Tough Row to Hoe for T. Rowe
NEW DELHI--A fund-management giant in its U.S. home market, T. Rowe Price Group Inc. is finding India tough to crack.</br></br>Two years ago, T. Rowe joined a long line of Western financial firms hoping to tap into India's growing wealth and bought a large stake in the country's oldest mutual-fund company.</br></br>But the investment in Mumbai-based UTI Asset Management Co. has been dogged by discord with the Indian partners, slackening in India's mutual-fund industry and slippage of UTI's market share. T. Rowe's woes also underscore the difficulties facing some foreign money managers in the country.</br></br>Though Indian laws allow foreign companies to fully own mutual-fund companies, T. Rowe, like some other foreign rivals, entered India through a joint venture, hoping to eventually increase its ownership. The Baltimore-based company in 2010 teamed up with four government-owned financial groups, which sold T. Rowe an equal portion of their UTI equity for a total of $140 million. The deal made T. Rowe the single-largest holder in UTI, with 26%.</br></br>But that didn't help when UTI's chairman and managing director, U.K. Sinha, left last February to head India's capital markets regulator.