The president of Twentieth Century AMC, VR Deshpande, envisages progress in primarily three areas. These are consolidation and improvement of performance, further improvement of investor services and introduction of new and innovative products with the help of Zurich's expertise.

The four existing schemes of Twentieth Century have performed reasonably well in fiscal 1997-98. "We have been able to achieve enhanced returns for our unitholders because of the restructuring that we have undertaken in the last twoyears. The year 1995 was bad for us as the markets collapsed and we also went down with them. In 1996 we started restructuring and the result is visible in this year's returns," said Deshpande.

The net asset values (NAVs) of the various schemes of the fund had touched their historic lows in December 1996. Initially, the fund was very aggressive in the initial public offer (IPO) market which resulted in a number of junk stocks finding a place in its portfolio. The change of management saw the implementation of a major restructuring exercise which also meant divesting its holdings. A look at the returns generated shows that although the annualised returns have improved, the NAVs of two of its schemes are still quoting below par. The NAV of Centurion Open-end Fund is quoting at Rs 7.48 and and that of Centurion Quantum Growth at Rs 7.34 as on March 27. Of the two other schemes, Centurion Prudence's NAV currently stands at Rs 11.27 while Centurion Taxsaver '96 has an NAV of Rs 12.37. Centurion Open-end Fund, ahigh liquidity growth-oriented scheme, has reported annualised returns of 23.7 per cent. "All the four schemes have beaten the benchmark stock indices. As compared to these returns, the BSE Sensex has given returns of 15.8 per cent for the same period. The BSE 100 Index has given a return of 15.9 per cent. The Crisil-500 index has given a return of 13.3 per cent," said Deshpande.