Federated Investors Management Discusses Q2 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Let me say that during today's call, we may make forward-looking statements. And we want to note that Federated's actual results may be materially different than the results implied by such statements. We invite you to review the risk disclosures in our SEC filings. No assurance can be given as to future results, and Federated assumes no duty to update any of these forward-looking statements. And with that, I'll turn it over to Chris.

John Christopher Donahue

Thank you, Ray, and good morning. I will be begin with a brief review of Federated's recent business performance before turning over the call to Tom to discuss our financials.

Looking first at cash management. Average money market fund assets were down $8 billion from the prior quarter, while the quarter end totals decreased by $7 billion to $239 billion. The second quarter has some seasonality from tax payments in both April and in June, and our market share remains over 9%. The impact of yield-related fee waivers decreased again in the second quarter, and Tom will cover this in more detail later.

Regarding the market share, it's interesting just to look at the history, where it is running at about 9.5% today. At the end of '11, it was running at about 9.4%, 8.7% at the end of '10, 8.5% in '09 and '08, and about 7% in '07, and 5% in 2000.

On the regulatory front, it has been reported that a document outlining new money market fund regulations has been circulated by the SEC Chairman to the other commissioners.

While the proposal is not publicly available, prior comments from the Chairman indicate that the proposal includes the choice of floating the NAV or imposing redemption restrictions on money funds, in combination with the capital requirement at the fund level. These ideas have been previously floated and even in their discussion form, they have drawn extensive negative reaction and commentary from money fund investors, issuers, businesses, state and local municipal finance authorities, various members of Congress, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the ICI, and individual money fund management companies. The reason is it's because it's very poor policy.

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