The most recent issue of our Crane Data's quarterly Money Fund Intelligence Distribution Survey looks at the asset growth of fund families that have had "bailout" events and contains a table listing all of the advisors that have publicly disclosed support actions to date. Crane Data estimates that money fund managers to date, on paper, have lost over $2 billion on the purchase and/or protection of almost $30 billion in securities.
Note that Legg Mason's earnings this morning -- see our "Link of the Day" -- may push these totals upwards slightly as the company increases its loss estimates of previously taken support actions to a total of $508 million.
While the final accounting tallies could grow as large as losses of $5 billion on $50 billion of securities, we believe that actual losses will total from $500 million to $1.25 billion, or 1% to 2.5% of defaulted or downgraded SIV assets. This is based on backing out expected recovery rates, given that SIVs may be 10 times worse than historical loss rates on CP, which are well above 99%. These loss totals also would be a mere fraction of money funds' annual revenues, which are approaching $15 billion.
MFI Distribution Survey found that advisors supporting their money funds haven't seen outflows. Asset increases for advisors experiencing bailouts averaged 0.1% in April, compared to 1.8% gains for all families (and 2.3% for the 25 largest). Funds experiencing support actions grew 6.0% over the last 3 months, vs. growth of 13.7% for all funds. Bailout fund assets have grown 30.0% the past 12 months vs. 48.2% for all fund assets.
The only "support-related" fund family to show significant outflows for the last 1-month, 3-month and 12-month periods is `Credit Suisse, which posted declines of 34.0%, 39.9%, and 61.7% over these periods. For a full listing of fund family asset rankings and changes, see the new Money Fund Intelligence Distribution Survey.
