Chennai: Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund announced here the launch of its 'Long Term Advantage Fund', aimed at providing long-term capital appreciation.

According to A Balasubramaniam, chief investing officer, Birla Sun Life MF, the five-year, close-ended equity fund was targetted at investors wanting to maximise returns without having to worry about market volatility. The fund, he said, would follow the bottom up approach to build a quality portfolio.

Balasubramnaiam pointed out that close-ended funds had outperformed open-ended funds. For instance, Birla Tax Plan '98, a close-ended fund, had generated superior returns over the last eight years, even outperforming the BSE Sensex and equity linked savings schemes.

The close-ended fund will use derivatives to theextent of 50 per cent of its portfolio, to create a hedge during extreme volatility in the markets, added Balasubramaniam.

The mutual fund will also shortly be launching a multiple yield fund, with over 70 per cent of the corpus being inveted in debt instruments.

Established in 1994, Birla Mutual Fund provides a range of investment products in equity and fixed income asset classes. It is a joint venture between the Aditya Birla Group and Sun Life Financial Inc. of Canada.

It was the first to launch a liquid fund (Birla Cash Plus, a dividend yield fund (Birla Dividend Yield Plus), a debt index fund (Birla Bond Index Fund), replicating the Crisil Composite Bond Fund index. It is also the first asset management company in India to be awarded the ISO 9001:2000 Certification by DNV, Netherlands.