Income fund from Kothari: Kothari Pioneer Asset Management plans to add a closed-end income fund to add to its flurry of launches in recent times. The AMC has filed the offer document with the Securities and Exchange Board of India and the scheme is likely to open for initial subscription on March 22. The initial offer will close on March 31. Christened Kothari Pioneer Maxima, the closed-end income fund will have a duration of 37 months.

Not a harsh budget, says Bhushan: Reflecting the sombre mood among the brokingcommunity, Vijay Bhushan said he does not expect a harsh Budget from Yashwant Sinha. The former member of the DSE board says the market is likely to remain range-bound unless there are any fiscal corrections in the Union Budget. However, with most of the hard decisions already taken and given the political compulsions of the fragile BJP-led coalition, this is highly unlikely.

Retirement Bond is attractive: The most unique feature of IDBI Felxibond 6 is the new bond instrument aimed at roping in investors who are at the thresholds of retirement. Aptly named, the Retirement Bond offers equal annuity payments after a specified wait period. The annuity varies according to the wait period. The minimum investment is four bonds per individual or Rs 20,000. The14-year maturity option is the most lucrative with a yield of 14.13 per cent.

The lure of open-end ELSS: With the equity-linked saving schemes going open-end, these funds should be able to add significant value as tax-planning vehiclescombined with improvement in performance. With the new regulation, fund companies have been saved from the process of floating a new fund in the last quarter of every financial year. The effort and expense involved in launching such schemes and the small corpus garnered have deterred funds from launching new schemes.

Sebi suspends broking firm: The Securities & Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has decided to suspend Chucknoo & Co (Sudhir Agarwal and Sanjeev Agarwal, are the partners of the broking firm) registered member of Uttar Pradesh Stock Exchange for a period of two months, wef March 9 to May 8, 1999. Clarification: Prudential-ICICI has clarified that it has no cross-holdings between its funds under management. With reference to the report published in The Financial Express, the AMC has stated that the confusion arose due to a printing error in its offer document for the FMCG Fund. The AMC is recalling the offer documents in order to have them reprinted to correct the error.