Third Avenue Didn’t Actually Suspend Redemptions From High-Yield Fund

We quits?

Not at all! It merely closed the fund and paid out redemptions in the form of shares of a liquidating trust that you can’t redeem from, and so any claims that it may have violated those mutual fund rules requiring daily liquidity couldn’t be further off base. Plus, it knows what’s good for you.

John Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law School, said the fund’s move may be seen as “high-handed, somewhat arbitrary,” but the alternative might have been a “total failure” of the fund.

“Shareholders might be better off with a liquidating trust than an insolvent entity that would send bigger shock waves,” he said.

So can we all just move on, since everything’s above-board and what’s best for you, anyway? No? Pity.

U.S. securities regulators are scrutinizing Third Avenue Management LLC’s unusual legal strategy to effectively halt shareholder redemptions from a high-yield fund without first obtaining a green light from the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to people familiar with the matter….

Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Securities Division announced it has begun an investigation into the Third Avenue fund’s closure Monday, Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin’s office said in a statement.

SEC Reviewing Third Avenue’s Move to Bar Redemptions From Fund [WSJ]