Then-S.E.C. Chairman Mary Schapiro's plan to add protections to money funds has stalled, Bloomberg's Dave Michaels and Christopher Condon reports.

“Nothing has fundamentally changed to address the structural weaknesses of money funds,” the Bloomberg reporters quote Sheila Bair, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. who now leads the Systemic Risk Council, a nonpartisan group whose members include former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill.

The money fund reform effort had experienced a resurgance toward the end of 2012, when Shapiro left and then S.E.C. commissioner Elisse Walter scaled back the proposal to make it more palatable, Michael and Condon write. However, Fidelity [profile] and Federated Investors [profile], as well as other companies, still did not support the plan.

The industry found commissioners Daniel M. Gallagher and Troy Paredes, two Republicans and Luis Aguilar, a Democrat, to be the most receptive to complaints about the money fund plan, Michaels and Condon write. Aguilar was considered a possible swing vote at the time. It's worth nothing that Aguilar was a former general counsel at Invesco [profile].

Michael and Condon quoted Janet Seiberg, senior policy analyst at Guggenheim Investments [profile] Securities LLC's Washington Research group, as saying, "The Fed and Treasury will declare victory if there is either a floating NAV or a redemption limit. If the SEC can't get across the finish line, FSOC will wade back in."

To read more, click here. 

Edited by: Casey Quinlan


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