The July issue of Crane Data's Money Fund Intelligence newsletter was posted on our website and e-mailed to subscribers this morning. It features the articles: "SEC on Reform Proposals; Comments Due by 9/17," which reviews the SEC's Sarah ten Siethoff's recent comments on proposed regulations; "ICI's Stevens Keynotes Symposium: Blasts Floating," which excerpts from Paul Stevens' recent speech in Baltimore; and, "Treasury's Rutherford on Reforms, FRNs, Stability," which quotes from the Assistant Secretary's Money Fund Symposium appearance. We've also updated our Money Fund Wisdom database query system with June 30, 2013, performance statistics and rankings, and our MFI XLS will also be sent out Monday a.m. (It is already available at our Content center too, along with the recordings and Powerpoints from our Baltimore Money Fund Symposium.) Our June 30 Money Fund Portfolio Holdings are scheduled to go out Wednesday, July 10.
Our SEC on Reform piece says, "The Securities & Exchange Commission proposed new reforms to money market mutual fund regulations last month, including the option of either a floating NAV for prime institutional funds or a liquidity fee and gates regime, plus a series of additional disclosures and tweaks The Proposed "Money Market Fund Reform" was officially published in the Federal Register on June 19, and interested parties have until Sept. 17 to submit comments. (See http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed.shtml for the full 198-page proposal and to comment. No comments of substance have been submitted as of yet.)"
The July issue's lead story adds, "SEC Special Counsel Sarah ten Siethoff, who participated in the "Regulatory Roundtable" at our Money Fund Symposium (with Federated's John McGonigle and Dechert's Jack Murphy), commented in Baltimore, "We tried to be very clear on this proposal, from literally the first page of it and all the way through, on what the goals were for this rulemaking. [W]e were seeking to preserve, as much as possible, the benefits of money market funds, while lessening the susceptibility [to] redemptions, reducing contagion effects and increasing transparency of their risks.... What we were seeking to do is to try to find the best way to make that balance."
MFI excerpts from the Stevens keynote for its monthly "profile," writing, "Investment Company Institute President & CEO Paul Stevens delivered the opening keynote to the 5th annual Crane's Money Fund Symposium in Baltimore (which ran June 19-21). His speech, entitled, "Top of the Ninth? The State of Play for Money Market Funds," states, "From the start, ICI and the fund industry have consistently supported measures designed to make money market funds more resilient, subject to two conditions. First, we must preserve the key features of money market funds that make them so valuable for investors and issuers. Second, we must preserve choice for investors by ensuring a robust and competitive global money market fund industry.""
The article on Treasury's Rutherford explains, "The U.S. Treasury's Matt Rutherford also spoke at our recent Money Fund Symposium and discussed financial stability, reforms, and the likely introduction of floating rate notes later this year. We excerpt from his comments below. He told us, "As others have pointed out, intermediaries in the money markets often conduct maturity, liquidity, and credit transformation without access to central bank liquidity, deposit insurance and prudential regulation, and leading up to the financial crisis the role of these intermediaries ... increased greatly. The subsequent disruptions in specific markets revealed structural weaknesses in some of these intermediaries, including ABCP conduits, SIVs, securities lenders and money market mutual funds. Now this is territory that has been covered by policymakers and academics. [B]ut today I just want to focus my discussion more narrowly on Treasury's interest within money markets, and this includes our rule as an issuer, as well as our ongoing support to make private money markets more resilient, in particular through money market mutual fund reform as well as tri-party repo reform."
See the latest issue and future "News" postings for more details, or contact us to request the latest issue.
