SEC seeking structural reform of money-market mutual funds

The Securities and Exchange Commission will soon propose rules for revamping money-market mutual funds, pushing the options of a floating net asset value and capital buffers, SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro said.

“Money-market funds, while perhaps not the cause of the downward spiral of events, certainly exacerbated the financial breakdown,” Schapiro said Monday in remarks prepared for a Securities Industry and Financial Markets Assn. conference in New York. The SEC is pursuing “further structural reform” in the $2.6-trillion industry, she said.

Regulators have been working to make U.S. money funds safer and more stable since the Sept. 16, 2008, collapse of the $62.5-billion Reserve Primary Fund. Spooked by the fund’s closure, investors withdrew about $310 billion from prime money funds that week, helping to freeze global credit markets. The Treasury and Federal Reserve stepped in with guarantees and other steps to stop the run.

“Our country should never again be in the position of having to choose between providing support to private market participants, including money-market funds, or risking a breakdown of the broader financial system,” Schapiro said.

Schapiro’s remarks served to narrow the options for reform from a longer list laid out by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, an advisory body to the Obama administration, in October 2010. Potential reforms now shelved include requiring an industry-financed liquidity backstop, regulating funds as special-purpose banks and creating an insurance system for the funds.

The remaining options include the idea of forcing funds to adopt a floating share price, a concept that industry leaders have said will destroy the attraction of money funds.

“Any reforms must preserve the utility of money-market funds for investors and avoid imposing costs that would make large numbers of advisors unwilling or unable to continue to sponsor these funds,” Paul Schott Stevens, president of the Investment Company Institute in Washington, said after Schapiro’s speech.

Moving to a floating share price would require dramatic industry changes and pose a challenge to policymakers in managing the transition, Schapiro said.