Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Holy Sh*t: Money Market Breaks Buck; Freezes Redemptions

One the largest money market funds has put a seven-day freeze on investor redemptions after the net asset value of its shares fell below $1.

Reserve Primary Fund, a $64 billion fund managed by money market fund inventor The Reserve, said late Tuesday that its $785 million holding of Lehman Brothers Holdings debt has been valued at zero.

As of 4 p.m., the value of the fund's share was 97 cents. The Reserve said that redemption requests received before 3 p.m. will be paid out at $1 a share.

"Effective today and until further notice, the proceeds of redemptions from The Primary Fund will not be transmitted to the redeeming investor for a period of up to seven calendar days after the redemption," The Reserve said in a statement.

On Monday, Wachovia said it would pump money into three Evergreen money market funds. Evergreen would not disclose how much is being put into the funds.

BlackRock Inc. sent a letter to its money market shareholders on Monday telling them that its funds had no Lehman debt.

"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," noted Simon Mendelson, managing director in BlackRock's COO global cash management group.

No comments:

Post a Comment