Below, we excerpt pieces of BlackRock's "Letter to Institutional Money Market Fund Shareholders" (Sept. 2008), which was posted yesterday and which nicely summarizes the points that most firms have been making about what they're NOT invested in. "We continue to receive questions from investors about [credit and liquidity concern] headlines and, therefore, `wish to provide an update on money market funds managed by BlackRock.... While we generally do not comment on portfolio holdings outside of the normally published schedule of investments, the extraordinary events surrounding Lehman Brothers prompt us to confirm that we do not have any holdings of Lehman Brothers paper, nor is Lehman a counterparty to any repurchase agreements in our 2a-7 registered money market funds." They add, "Current market events have not necessitated a reevaluation of our methods for managing this important asset class; rather, it has reinforced our commitment to the approach we have taken for more than thirty years."
