Cash & Liquidity Management
Published  5 MIN READ
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Risky Business: A Crisis for Money Market Funds

by Ingmar Adlerberg, President, Riskdata.

For corporate treasurers, as for many investors, money market funds are the Fort Knox of investment vehicles. By purchasing debt securities issued by banks, large corporations and the government, money market funds carry a relatively low default risk while still offering high returns in comparison to similar low-risk/liquid products. However, given the current credit crunch, these funds are experiencing unprecedented volatility. Some of those funds may have been investing in riskier holdings that were not in line with investors’ expectations.

Poor understanding of risks led to losses

For example, unexpected losses by French money market funds, in the summer market crisis, caused by poor understanding of exposure to mortgage backed securities and credit, are now a major concern for corporate treasurers and CFOs. Of the total fund universe, some €500bn were invested in money market funds – the typical types of fund in which corporate cash is invested on a short-term ‘riskless’ basis. Yet August saw a major crisis for money market funds. In France, OPCVM sudden losses accounted for more than 50% of year-to-date performance. According to the most commonly used risk models, this type of event should occur once in thousands of years.

A study carried out by Riskdata, the leading provider of risk management tools for the alternative investment market, provides detailed analysis that shows that neither basic risk measures, nor fund ratings succeeded to identify the nature and magnitude of risk.

Riskdata analysed the performance of 2,000 funds on the French market with total assets under management of €1.368 trillion (thus covering most of the volume of the French funds market, which is €1.6 trillion according to official data). The funds studied were grouped into categories based on their stated strategy from completely safe to more aggressive (using the categories of the major fund rating agencies), and Riskdata calculated performance and risk for each category for the year-to-date and for the crisis period from July 15 to August 20.