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This post will bring to a close, for now, our survey of the requirements of new Rule 18f-4, which investment companies must comply with by August 19, 2022. This post considers whether a Chief Compliance or Risk Officer should seek to treat some or all of their funds as Limited Derivatives Users and how that choice, in turn, relates to the decision about whether to treat reverse repurchase agreements as derivatives transactions. But first, we review the compliance procedures required by Rule 18f-4 for (nearly) every fund. We also provide links to compliance checklists provided in earlier posts.…

Yesterday, the Investment Adviser Association published our article on “Dealing with the New Derivatives Rule: A Guide of Legal and Compliance Professionals” in the “Compliance Corner” of its September 2021 IAA Newsletter.

At a high level, the article:

  • Provides a background on the limitations on senior securities under the Investment Company Act of

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This eleventh installment of our review of the compliance requirements of new Rule 18f‑4 as it applies to business development companies, closed-end funds and open-end funds other than money market funds (“Funds”) completes our discussion of unfunded commitment agreements. Here we consider what changes may be required for a Fund to comply with paragraph (e) of Rule 18f‑4. We suspect this may prove relatively easy for an open-end Fund.…

This is the tenth installment of our review of the compliance requirements of new Rule 18f‑4 as it applies to business development companies, closed-end funds and open-end funds other than a money market fund (“Funds”). We have previously discussed the asset sufficiency risk posed by unfunded commitment agreements and the means by which paragraph (e) addresses this risk. This post will use these concepts to develop a working definition of when a firm or stand-by commitment should be treated as an unfunded commitment agreement.…

This is the ninth installment of our review of the compliance requirements of new Rule 18f‑4. Our last post explained why unfunded commitment agreements present asset sufficiency risk but did not create leverage risk. In this post, we will explain how paragraph (e) of the new rule controls asset sufficiency risk, tracing its origins back to Release No. IC-10666 (“Release 10666”).…

Subject to Steve’s caveat regarding the definition of an “unfunded commitment agreement,” we continue our exploration of Rule 18f-4 with a focus on the treatment of such commitments under paragraph (e) of the new rule. Like paragraph (d), (e) applies only to business development companies, closed-end funds and open-end funds other than money market funds (“Funds”). We begin with a conceptual question: how can a contract to lend money and a contract to repay borrowed money both be “senior securities” under Section 18?…

This is the seventh installment of Andrew Cross and my review of the compliance requirements of new Rule 18f‑4 and the first to deal with “unfunded commitment agreements.” Before plunging into the substance of paragraph (e) of Rule 18f-4, which regulates unfunded commitment agreements, I want to revisit a problem I have with the definition. My problem stems from trying to answer a basic question: Is a binding commitment to make a loan upon demand by the borrower, with stated principal and term and a fixed interest rate, an “unfunded commitment agreement?”…

This post ends our series critiquing the proposed definition of “unfunded commitment agreement” in re-proposed Rule 18f-4. This definition is important because it would create an exception from the Value at Risk (“VaR”) limitations the proposed rule would impose on “derivatives transactions” by investment companies. This post will recap the problems with the proposed definition and the approach we would recommend for addressing these shortcomings.…

In a previous post, we compared loan commitments, which re-proposed Rule 18f-4 would treat as “unfunded commitment agreements,” and “to be announced” (“TBA”) mortgage-backed securities (“MBS”) trades and put options, which Rule 18f-4 would treat as “derivative transactions,” to identify features that may be unique to loan commitments. Our last post showed how one feature, greater uncertainty as to the term of eventual loans as compared to the average life of the mortgages that underlie TBAs (in each case resulting from prepayments of the loans and mortgages, respectively), could prevent loan commitments from fluctuating in value. If the value of the commitment does not fluctuate substantially, the commitment cannot “present an opportunity for the fund to realize gains or losses between the date of the fund’s commitment and its subsequent investment” and thus will not have a leveraging effect on the fund.

Gauging the probability of drawings and prepayments is not a practical approach to regulating commitments by investment companies, so we will continue analyzing the potential leveraging effects of the unique features of loan commitments we previously identified. Two features, the right to terminate the commitment and the expectation that the commitment would be drawn, were uniquely present in loan commitments. Two other features, the availability of offsetting transactions and posting margin to secure the commitment, were uniquely absent.…

Our last post used a comparison of loan commitments, which re-proposed Rule 18f-4 would treat as “unfunded commitment agreement,” and “to be announced” (“TBA”) mortgage-backed securities trades and put options for bonds, which Rule 18f-4 would treat as “derivative transactions,” to isolate features that could be used to delineate these commitments based on their leveraging effects. Our next post will continue this analysis by considering whether each unique feature of a loan commitment mitigates its potential “leveraging effects.” Before proceeding, however, we will consider one feature shared by loan commitments and TBAs to illustrate why even seemingly common features may have different leveraging effects.…