BNY Mellon cash reserves fund ‘breaks buck’

The BNY Mellon’s $22 billion Institutional Cash Reserves fund (ICRF) “broke the buck,” falling in value to $0.991 per share on Sept. 16, Bloomberg reported today. The report added that the drop in value was due to the fund’s holdings in Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the New York financial firm that filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this week. The cash reserve fund “is part of our securities lending program and is limited to securities lending clients only,” BNY Mellon wrote in a statement about the private fund. “The fund is a collective trust, not a 2a-7 Dreyfus money market fund. It represents less than 1% of our total securities lending and collective fund activity.” To protect liquidity, the firm has isolated the Lehman assets into a separate structure. “At the time of the split, the Lehman assets represented 1.13% of the fund,” the firm reported. “Clients have been informed. We are continuing to monitor very closely all market related activity in our money market, cash and securities lending operations.” On Monday, the oldest money market mutual fund, The Reserve Primary Fund (RPRXX), lost value and “broke the buck” InvestmentNews Sept. 17.