A series of five investment funds investing in top grade French bonds has been launched by Société Générale Asset Management in Paris, which are de-signed for institutional and corporate investors.

The Franc-denominated SGAM Première funds track French in-terest rates with a spectrum of maturities from daily to 10 years. This enables the investor to en-hance his investment since each fund is positioned differently on the interst rate curve," says SGAM. The aim is to provide a higher yield than is available on the Paris money market.

The five funds have been AAA-rated by Standard & Poors, which is considered by SGAM to be important for non-French resident investors.

Both SGAM Premiere 'Jour', which invests in money market assets, and 'Associa', investing in high yield Treasury issues, have no initial charges. The other three funds covering respectively the periods of three to five years, five to seven and seven to 10 years carry a 1% charge for investments up to Ffr1m, and 0.5% thereafter.

But the managers say that un-der certain conditions initial char-ges may not be paid. Transfers between the funds are free of charge for amounts of over Ffr5m.

According to SGAM, the management of the funds is not indexed based, as the fund manager has a 20% margin over the benchmark to improve on each relevant index."