NEW YORK (Standard & Poor's) Oct. 15, 2008--Standard & Poor's Ratings
Services' Fund Ratings group said today that the use of amortized cost pricing
for instruments with legal final maturities of 60 days or less in
U.S.-registered money market funds and less than three months in
Irish-domiciled money market funds would not have a negative impact on its
'AAAm' rated money market funds if the following conditions are met:
-- The securities maintain Standard & Poor's short-term ratings of 'A-1'
or better;
-- The securities are not on CreditWatch developing or negative;
-- The securities are not associated with material credit and liquidity
events impacting the security's market price and market expectation of a
deterioration of an issuer's creditworthiness, even if such an issuer is
highly rated;
-- Consistent with our 'AAAm' criteria, rated funds provide a rationale
for the process by which fund management has chosen to suspend mark-to-market
pricing and details regarding the frequency of review and by whom it is
undertaken.
-- Legal final maturities are used for variable-/floating-rate
securities; and
-- As part of the weekly surveillance reporting to Standard & Poor's,
amortized cost and mark-to-market valuation for each security is provided.
Also, securities that are being priced using their amortized cost in the
weekly calculation of net asset value should be identified. This will help
identify possible price discrepancies at the security and/or fund level so
they can be closely monitored and reviewed.
Although these issues are directed at U.S.- and Irish-domiciled money
market funds, this approach would also be applied to funds of other domiciles
if the conditions are maintained and the maturity of the securities in
question have a final maturity of less than 90 days.
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