"Failed Fund Keeps Investors Waiting"
The Wall Street Journal writes "Failed Fund Keeps Investors Waiting, saying, "On Tuesday, Reserve Management Co. said it will pay back another $2 billion of the fund's assets. But after that payout, there will still be $4.8 billion of investor money sitting in the defunct fund -- and the fund has said it will hold on to about $3.5 billion of assets to cover costs and expenses, including the cost of the more than 30 lawsuits it faces. The fund has said it will for the time being return 91.72 cents for each dollar invested in the fund -- a far cry from money-market funds' promise of maintaining $1 share values, but also below Primary Fund's own valuation of 97 cents a share. For investors, the holdup means that more than six months after the fund first broke the buck they are still waiting to get back cash they thought was held in a liquid and safe investment." (See The Reserve's release here. Crane Data estimates that the eventual payout will be $0.98 a share.) Also, `ICI reported a drop in money market fund assets of $28.49 billion to $3.818 trillion. The trade group's weekly numbers said, "Assets of retail money market funds decreased by $7.24 billion to $1.328 trillion ... Assets of institutional money market funds decreased by $21.25 billion to $2.490 trillion." Crane Data expects money fund assets to decline sharply over the next two to three weeks as income tax payments are withdrawn from these accounts.
