American pension funds begged for relief from having to top up their accounts:
Pension funds at Pfizer Inc., International Business Machines Corp., United Parcel Service Inc. and dozens of other companies have joined the parade of businesses seeking relief from Congress amid this year’s economic meltdown.
Instead of money, they want legislation to suspend a federal law that would make them pump billions of dollars into retirement plans to offset stock-market losses as many struggle to find enough cash just to stay in business. They’re pressing Congress to consider the issue this week before this year’s session adjourns.
It’s another difficult question of mark-to-market vs. whatever-other accounting! Frankly, I think the entire defined-benefit paradigm is dead – or if not dead, should be.
In a rather chilling development, specific bank credit decisions are being politicized:
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich said today the state would suspend its business with Bank of America Corp. until the lender restores credit to the shuttered Republic Windows & Doors company in Chicago where workers are staging a sit-in.
Blagojevich commented at a news conference after meeting with employees who have stayed at the factory since Dec. 5, when it closed after the bank canceled its line of credit. Illinois does “hundreds of millions of dollars” in business with the bank, he said.
Three-month US T-Bills are now trading at less than a beep:
The Treasury sold $27 billion in three-month bills at the lowest rate since it starting auctioning the securities in 1929 amid record demand for the safety of U.S. debt during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The bills were sold at a high discount rate of 0.005 percent, the Treasury said today in Washington. At last week’s auction, the bills drew a rate of 0.05 percent. The government received bids for the bills totaling more than triple the amount sold.
There is a report of another chapter in the BCE saga:
BCE Inc. told would-be acquirers that it received an auditor’s opinion showing the company would be solvent after the C$52 billion purchase by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and a group of U.S. private-equity firms, according to two people briefed on the matter.
The opinion, delivered by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, is contrary to an analysis by rival accounting firm KPMG LLC.
Hmm … I wonder if the same deal can go the Supreme Court twice!
Sorry, folks! I’m just plain out of time, so there is no volume or price-change table today. I will point out though, that the SplitShare sector was on fire today, with strength pretty much across the board.
Note that these indices are experimental; the absolute and relative daily values are expected to change in the final version. In this version, index values are based at 1,000.0 on 2006-6-30. The Fixed-Reset index was added effective 2008-9-5 at that day’s closing value of 1,119.4 for the Fixed-Floater index. |
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Index | Mean Current Yield (at bid) | Mean YTW | Mean Average Trading Value | Mean Mod Dur (YTW) | Issues | Day’s Perf. | Index Value |
Ratchet | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | 0 | N/A | N/A |
Fixed-Floater | 7.09% | 7.43% | 87,773 | 13.18 | 6 | +1.6424% | 744.9 |
Floater | 9.56% | 9.85% | 68,374 | 9.53 | 2 | +0.4077% | 370.8 |
Op. Retract | 5.53% | 6.99% | 141,821 | 4.05 | 15 | -0.1799% | 978.1 |
Split-Share | 6.94% | 13.23% | 71,831 | 3.94 | 14 | +6.0720% | 885.9 |
Interest Bearing | 9.17% | 18.04% | 56,659 | 2.87 | 3 | +2.7985% | 798.7 |
Perpetual-Premium | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Perpetual-Discount | 7.76% | 7.88% | 206,837 | 11.55 | 71 | +1.7398% | 712.9 |
Fixed-Reset | 6.07% | 5.42% | 1,125,193 | 14.41 | 16 | +1.3936% | 987.2 |