Fundsters in the closed-end market may want to take note of this morning's Fund Track article, which highlights the auction-rate securities market.

The Wall Street Journal's Daisy Maxey reports that U.S. closed-end funds still hold $26.4 billion in auction-rate preferred shares, citing a new report by Fitch Ratings.

About 61 percent of closed-end funds, or 250, are still leveraged with auction-rate preferred shares, down from 347 in January 2008, according to Fitch, which based its findings on a review of publicly available financial statements of 437 U.S. closed-end funds.

Ian Rasmussen, a director in Fitch's U.S. fund and asset-managers group and an author of the report, noted that "it was surprising that there was this much outstanding." 

Edited by: Hung Tran


Stay ahead of the news ... Sign up for our email alerts now
CLICK HERE