The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) will terminate the publication of SIFMA Auction Rate Securities Indices.
To do so in an orderly fashion with proper notice to the market, each time the number of issues included in an index decreases to ten, SIFMA will post a notice on its website announcing that index will cease to be published in four weeks. The first index to be terminated is the SIFMA Auction Rate Preferred One Month Index, which will be published for the last time on 8 April 2009.
It is critical that any SIFMA branded index be valid and reliable, which means there must be sufficient data points in the index so it can represent the state of the market, says Leslie Norwood, managing director and associate general counsel, SIFMA.
Due to the decrease in the amount of auction rate securities issues outstanding and the outlook for future issuance, we recognize that there may not be enough data points to calculate these indices.
L.D.