After fierce industry lobbying and internal bickering, the Securities and Exchange Commission is moving closer to overhauling the money market fund industry.
Just days after Mary Jo White became its chairwoman, the agency’s spokesman, John Nester, said on Tuesday that “the staff expects to have something for the commission’s consideration in the near future.”
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, a wide array of regulators disputed the supposed safety of money market funds. The funds, they argued, could be hit again by the kind of shock they experienced in 2008 after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
Last summer, the S.E.C. was moving toward a vote on new rules. But the agency’s chairwoman, Mary L. Schapiro, dropped that effort after three of the agency’s five commissioners opposed the plan. Ms. Schapiro’s decision was seen as a victory for the mutual fund industry, which had waged a big lobbying campaign to scuttle a crackdown.
The prospect of a new reform proposal emerged on Tuesday morning when Laurence D. Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock, announced the company’s first-quarter results. In response to an analyst’s question about money market funds, Mr. Fink said the situation was “pretty dynamic.” But he suggested that with Ms. White in place, “I think we’re going to see some type of announcement from the S.E.C. shortly.”
The S.E.C. declined to discuss what the deal might look like, but Mr. Fink said he expected that it would involve some money market funds dropping their stable $1 a share value and moving to a so-called floating net asset value.