With Bharti AXA Investment Managers failing to make much of an impression in the market, Bharti Enterprises is working its way out of the mutual fund joint venture with the French biggie AXA, almost after a year of the registering of the asset management company. The fund, which started its operations in July 2008, had assets under management of Rs 186 crore as of February 2009.

The Bharti decision to exit Bharti AXA Investment Managers - in which Bharti Ventures has a 25 percent stake, while AXA Investment Managers Asia Holdings holds the remaining 75 percent - will not affect its affiliation with AXA in the sphere of life insurance and general insurance.

Bharti AXA Mutual Fund, one of the leading mutual fund house, has notified that it has collected Rs 20 crore via Bharti AXA Regular Return Fund, an open-ended income scheme during their initial offer period from 28 January to 26 February 2009.

The scheme aims to generate regular income through investments in fixed income securities and also to generate long term capital appreciation by investing a portion in equity and equity related instruments.

The performance of the scheme will be benchmarked against CRISIL MIP Blended Index.

Sebi seeking public comments on the same

The deadline for sending suggestions on variable entry load or fee for mutual fund agents is drawing closer and the responses so far are skewed toward one side.

Earlier, Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), the country's capital markets regulator, had mooted a proposal to allow mutual fund investors to mention the commission or fee that they would like to pay the advisor or agent, thus trying to bring transparency.

The average asset under management (AUM) of country's mutual fund industry increased 8.68% from Rs 4,609,489.97 million to Rs 5,009,733.79 million for the month ended Feb 28, 2009.

The data about 35 fund houses published by Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) shows that twenty three fund houses reported growth while 12 reported fall in their assets during the reporting period.

Fidelity International has announced the launch of its Fidelity Wealth Builder Fund, an open ended fund of funds scheme offering asset allocation options with three Plans, in the Indian market.

The investment objective of the fund is to generate reasonable returns based on the Plan selected with minimum and maximum asset allocation between debt and equity.

The company stated in a press release that the fund manager will use a two-tier investment approach i. e. asset allocation and fund selection to invest in Fidelity's funds.

Assets under management (AUMs) of Indian mutual funds have shown an increase of 4 per cent in December 2008. AUM had been declining since last three months according to the data released by the AMFI. The growth is caused following good performance of income funds. AUM of the mutual fund industry stands at Rs 4,18,336 crore as on December end as compared to Rs 4,02,029 crore in November 2008.