SEC's White Quiet on MMFs
On Friday, SEC Chair Mary Jo White spoke at the "SEC Speaks 2014," and only mentioned money market mutual funds in passing (and didn't mention pending regulations). She said, "When I arrived, it was imperative to set an aggressive rulemaking agenda. [T]hrough the tireless work of the staff and my fellow Commissioners, we made significant progress. On the day I was sworn in as Chair, we adopted identity theft rules requiring broker-dealers, mutual funds, investment advisers.... A month after that, we proposed rules to reform and strengthen the structure of money market funds.... The SEC of 2014 is an agency that increasingly relies on technology and specialized expertise. This is particularly evident in the SEC's new risk monitoring and data analytics activities. One important example is the SEC's new focus on risk monitoring of asset managers and funds. Last year featured a very concrete success from these risk monitoring efforts when the SEC brought an enforcement case against a money market fund firm charging that it failed to comply with the risk limiting conditions of our rules. In the past year, the SEC has established a dedicated group of professionals to monitor large-firm asset managers. These professionals who include former portfolio managers, investment analysts, and examiners track investment trends, review emerging market developments, and identify outlier funds. The tools they use include analytics of data we receive, high-level engagement with asset manager executives and mutual fund boards, data-driven, risk-focused examinations, and with respect to money market funds certain stress testing results." (See also, Commissioner Kara Stein's comments, which we'll excerpt from tomorrow.)
