Ignites on Northern "Top-Up"
Ignites published, "Northern Trust Plunks Down $45M to Top Up Funds." (See our July 27 News.) They write, "Northern Trust took a $45.8 million pre-tax charge in the second quarter to prop up the net asset values of two money market funds and two non-registered funds for institutional investors, according to the firm's second-quarter earnings report and a statement from the firm. The firm cited "legacy losses realized by the funds during the financial crisis" as the reason for the capital infusion, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript of the earnings call with analysts. The money funds are the $8.1 billion Northern Money Market Fund and the $4.4 billion Northern Institutional Liquid Assets Portfolio, Northern Trust said in the statement." It continues, "Fitch reviewed information from Crane Data and found that the shadow NAV of the firm's Money Market Fund increased from $0.9989 on July 9 to $1.00 the next day. If the bump-up in shadow NAV was the result of a capital injection, "it would have cost approximately $8 million," according to Fitch's recent report. Because it targets retail investors, the fund does not have to move to a floating net NAV, as required of institutional products under reform passed by the SEC last year, Fitch notes. Still, Northern Trust will have to post the fund's shadow NAV on its website, the research and rating agency notes, "which may have been one of the reasons for the top up."" In a statement, Northern commented, "As announced on July 22, 2015, Northern Trust recorded a pre-tax charge of $45.8 million in the second quarter of 2015 related to voluntary cash contributions to certain constant dollar net-asset-value (NAV) funds. These funds include the `Northern Money Market Fund, the Northern Institutional Liquid Assets Portfolio and two non-registered funds for institutional investors. These voluntary cash contributions offset legacy net losses in certain securities realized by these funds during the financial crisis. Prior to the contributions, all of these funds were trading well above the $0.9950 per share required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for constant NAV funds to transact at $1.00 per share. Northern Trust took this voluntary action to demonstrate its commitment to the constant dollar funds and their investors."
