Money-market fund fee waivers cost Charles Schwab $125 million in the first quarter of 2010. Looking at the quarterly earnings, released Thursday, The Wall Street Journal's Fund Track column Friday reported that Schwab would have had a revenue from asset-management and administration fees of $545 million, if the waivers hadn't expelled 23 percent of that figure.

"We think we've seen the low point [in interest rates] and that the first quarter was the high-water mark for the impact of the fee waivers," Schwab spokesman Greg Gable told The Journal.

For the quarter ended March 31, Schwab had net income of $119 million on total net revenue of $978 million.

Schwab should be able to get rid of the waivers once interest rates rise and a 1 percent increase in short-term rates would mean 0.6 percent of new net revenue, according to Gable.

In the first quarter of 2009, fee-waivers accounted for $6 million in negative revenue. That figure rose quarter-to-quarter and reached $110 million in Q4 of 2009. 

Edited by: Daniel Tovrov


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