Auction-Rate Securities, RIP?

Do auction-rate securities have a future? I’m not sure myself, so I put a couple of questions to Floyd

Newton, a partner in King & Spalding’s finance practice. Floyd has a long history in the auction-rate market, and seems to know what he’s talking about.

My first question was whether the new electronic trading platform being launched by Restricted Stock Partners is likely to help bring liquidity back to the market. Floyd says no:

I do not believe that this imitative will have any affect on the

secondary market for auction-rate securities. These securities are

readily available from the existing broker-dealers, and I am not aware

of any reason why having an electronic trading platform from this

company would have a positive impact on this market. The principal

issues in this market are simply a lack of investor confidence in this

market. When auctions begin to fail, for whatever reason, it creates a "panic" where investors rush to get out unless the broker-dealers act to

stabilize the market, and at the present, they are not able to do this.

My second question was whether John Carney is right when he says that auction-rate securities never had much of a market to begin with, and were always supported by the broker-dealers. Floyd’s unsure about that as well:

This is a more complicated question. First, I am not sure that I agree

that the auction market "never had enough buyer demand" to support

itself. I doubt that this market would have gotten to this size if

there were not buyers out there demanding this product, at least until

they became concerned about their liquidity. Stabilization is a

different issue. There is nothing wrong with stabilization to protect

the market and produce more uniform results. Where the buyers lose

confidence in the market in a short time period and there is a "rush" to

the door by the investors, it is not surprising that the broker-dealers

are not willing to "stabilize" the market.

Going forward, I suspect that this market will not exist in its present

form. Investors in this type of security are very concerned about their

liquidity, and with the liquidity of these investments now in question,

it is unlikely that they will return in volumes needed to support this

market.

Overall, then, it seems that the market used to be healthy, once upon a time, but that it’s now a thing of the past – and nothing, not even a swanky new electronic trading platform, is likely to save it.

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