new delhi with barely 10 days left for the multiple fund managers of the employees provident fund organisation epfo to begin managing the rs 30000 crore no step has been taken to communicate the decision of percentage allocation in the incremental corpus sharein fact a scheduled meeting of the central boards finance investment committee may not take place at all to finalise the allocation despite this the epfo appears to have decided on the share of funds to be managed by hsbc amc icici prudential amc reliance capital and the state bank of india sbi the organisation will transfer the corpus to be managed for one year to the four players by september 1 2008indications are that hsbc is set to win the mandate for managing 40 of epfos incremental corpus of rs 30000 crore for the oneyear period icici prudential is likely to win the secondlargest share of 25 of the incremental corpuswhile hsbc had quoted 00063 as fund management fee to become the lowest bidder icici prudential had quoted 00075 being the lowest bidder labour ministry sources pointed out hsbc would in all likelihood get to manage nearly rs 12000 crore of the total estimated incremental subscription during the september 2008august 2009 period icici prudential on the other hand would get to manage rs 7500 crorereliance capital and sbi are set to get an equal share of the remaining corpus since both had quoted identical management fee of 001 sources told et the two sources added could be allocated equal stakes in the incremental corpus estimated at 1820 eachbased on the formula of inverse proportion the lowest bidder was expected to get the largest share of the funds to be managed sources pointed out that crucially care was being taken to ensure that hsbc which quoted the lowest fee at 00063 should not be disadvantaged visavis percentage allocation of hsbcthis should be high enough to ensure that the low fee structure does not hamper its returns and to ensure that the returns are not superceded by the secondlowest bidder icici prudential amc in this case a figure has been worked out to ensure the highest quantum of commission fee for the lowest bidder a labour ministry official told eticici prudential has bagged the secondlargest share pegged at 2527 of the incremental corpus mathematically the figure works out well to restrain icici prudential from earning higher returns than what hsbc earns on the corpus the two had quoted the same fee at 001 for managing the fundsthe existing rs 155000crore corpus till september 1 2008 will also be managed in the same ratio by the four players though only sbi will get to enjoy the returns hsbc could get to handle rs 5500060000 crore of the corpus icici prudential may take care of rs 4000042000 crore while reliance and sbi will get to manage rs 2500027000 crore