NEW YORK (AP) -- Total U.S. money market mutual fund assets fell by $8.04 billion to $2.564 trillion for the week that ended Wednesday, the Investment Company Institute said Thursday.
Assets of the nation's retail money market mutual funds rose by $2.88 billion to $890.35 billion, the Washington-based mutual fund trade group said. Assets of taxable money market funds in the retail category grew by $1.6 billion to $703.59 billion. Tax-exempt retail fund assets rose by $1.28 billion to $186.77 billion.
Meanwhile, assets of institutional money market funds fell $10.92 billion to $1.674 trillion. Among institutional funds, taxable money market fund assets fell $10.97 billion to $1.588 trillion; assets of tax-exempt funds rose $50 million to $86.41 billion.
The seven-day average yield on money market mutual funds was 0.03 percent in the week that ended Tuesday, unchanged from the previous week, said Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet Inc. in Westborough, Mass.
The 30-day average yield was also unchanged from last week at 0.03 percent. The seven-day compounded yield was flat at 0.03 percent. The 30-day compounded yield was unchanged at 0.03 percent, Money Fund Report said.
The average maturity of portfolios held by money market mutual funds was the same as the previous week at 45 days.
The online service Bankrate.com said its survey of 100 leading commercial banks, savings and loan associations and savings banks in the nation's 10 largest markets showed the annual percentage yield available on money market accounts was unchanged from last week at 0.13 percent.
The North Palm Beach, Fla.-based unit of Bankrate Inc. said the annual percentage yield available on interest-bearing checking accounts was unchanged from the week before at 0.06 percent.
Bankrate.com said the annual percentage yield on six-month certificates of deposit was also unchanged from the previous week at 0.21 percent. The yield on one-year CDs fell to 0.32 percent from 0.33 percent. It fell to 0.51 percent from 0.52 percent on two-and-a-half-year CDs. It was flat at 1.12 percent on five-year CDs.
Finance Ministry Welcomes a Celebrity Bond Salesman - Wall Street Journal
By Eleanor Warnock
Despite having to deal with problems like reforming Japan’s finances and the sales tax debate, the Finance Ministry was in an ebullient mood Thursday as it welcomed sumo champion Hakuho, the new face of its “reconstruction bond” campaign.
As JRT told readers last week, Mongolian-born Hakuho is the first celebrity in this year’s lineup to market “reconstruction bonds” for Japan’s Ministry of Finance. The bonds are meant to help finance rebuilding in areas hit by the earthquake and tsunami last March.
A swarm of journalists crowded into the room where Finance Minister Jun Azumi met with Hakuho, prompting Senior Vice Minister of Finance Yukihisa Fujita to turn his camera on the crowd.
“All of you are more interesting than this!” he laughed.
Mr. Azumi even pretended to take on the 335-pound Hakuho in front of the cameras.
“Heavy,” he quipped.
The minister and the wrestler convened for 10 minutes, during which Hakuho revealed that his 26th birthday was on March 11, 2011, one of the reasons he said he felt a personal connection to the event. Since that day, he has visited the disaster areas with other wrestlers and volunteered to help victims in Tokyo.
“I am from Ishinomaki, one of the areas hit by the disaster,” Mr. Azumi said, referring to Hakuho’s trips to meet with disaster victims. “You don’t know how happy you’ve made the people there.”
After the meeting, Hakuho told reporters he hoped people would buy the bonds, and that he could provide “strength for the disaster areas.”
Four celebrities, including Hakuho, will lend their star power to the bond campaign this fiscal year though newspaper ads, television commercials, posters and pamphlets. Hakuho will promote the bonds this summer, followed by Homare Sawa of Japan’s World Cup-winning soccer team in the fall. The campaign will then feature JRT favorite AKB48 in the winter and Yokohama DeNA BayStars Manager Kiyoshi Nakahata next spring.
Hakuho has been featured before in ads for Japanese companies like Fuji Xerox Co. and Sapporo Breweries Ltd.
It remains to be seen whether the excitement today will translate to actual sales. The ministry plans issue ¥2.682 trillion ($33.87 billion) of the reconstruction bonds this fiscal year. As the euro crisis drags on, interest rates on JGBs have sunk to multiyear lows, and investors aren’t exactly looking to government bonds for the best returns.
The reconstruction bond commercial featuring Hakuho will premiere on June 9.
CSC finance director exits as fraud probe hits UK - Computer Weekly
The Cabinet Office has meanwhile extended negotiations with CSC over the NHS contract until 31 August, a year-after the coalition government said it had resolved its NHS IT problems.
Computer Weekly understands finance director Neil Malcolm left within the last month. CSC refused to discuss the nature of his departure.
A CSC spokeswoman said: "It is company policy not to comment on internal matters or matters relating to staff departures."
$25m of "Intentional irregularities" were found in the accounts of CSC's £3bn NHS IT contract after a year-long investigation by independent auditors, said CSC in a financial statement last week.
"Certain CSC finance employees based in the United Kingdom were aware prior to fiscal 2012 of the aforementioned errors, but those employees failed to appropriately correct the errors.
"Therefore, the Company has classified these errors as intentional. As a result, certain personnel have been suspended and additional disciplinary actions are being considered."
The errors had overstated CSC's income from the NHS contract by $24m after failing to account for costs.
Andy Thomson, vice president of international finance at CSC, refused to confirm whether Malcolm's departure was related to any fraudulent activity. He refused to answer any questions about the matter.
Investigators had found other accounting problems with the NHS contract, on which CSC wrote off $1.5bn last year after its continued failure to meet a 2007 deadline to deliver computer systems to health bodies over two-thirds of England. The investigation was ongoing. CSC did not expect further revelations would involve amounts large enough to dent its financials.
The US SEC probe, which is also ongoing, led to a string of revelations about intentional accounting errors in CSC's Nordics, Australia and Americas businesses. CSC Denmark CEO Carsten Lind resigned as details of the accounting problems broke last Autumn. Hundreds of redundancies have followed in the wake of a major Danish public sector IT failure and the loss of CSC's largest private sector customer in the region, the telecoms firm TDC, to Indian outsourcer Tata.
CSC is making approximately 1,100 redundancies in the UK, thought to be about 15 per cent of its local workforce, as it stands down teams that had been working on the NHS contract and absorbs the shock of financial results that recorded a $4.3bn world-wide loss last week.
The majority of the loss was attributed to the NHS write-off and a $2.7bn loss of goodwill over numerous acquisitions CSC had made in the last 10 years. $269m was attributed to a settlement CSC made with the US Army over its Logistics Modernisation Programme, one of 11 ERP projects that caused trouble for the US Department of Defence.
Neil Malcolm was unavailable for comment.
Finance Minister Biti a 'punch bag', says prominent labour consultant - The Zimbabwean
"Our Minister of Finance, Tendai Biti, is a punch bag," Makings said in Harare addressing business people gathered for the monthly Express Management meeting.
This meeting is sponsored by the British Council and is attended by prominent business people especially those that were trained in the United Kingdom (UK).
"He cannot do anything right now because his hands are tied.
"What he says and does is all controlled by the government which as you know is broke and so there is really nothing that he can do to solve the economic crisis.
"We really cannot blame Tendai Biti because he is just a punch bag in the government."
The statement comes at a time when Zimbabwe is expecting a high level delegation from the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the country.
The delegation is coming to Zimbabwe to investigate and try to find out the nation's economic recovery progress.
"The IMF are coming next month (June) to see how we are faring," Anthony Hawkins Head of the University of Zimbabwe's Business School, said in an exclusive interview last month.
He said:"There is nothing really new about this but I think this time around they will ask where our diamond cash is going to and how it is being used.
"As you probably know the Minister of Finance, Tendai Biti, has said we could earn about $600 million from diamonds but the Minister of Mines and Mining Development, Obert Mpofu, on the other hand, says this might not be the case and so this will have to be clarified to the delegation."
Hawkins said he did not know whether Zimbabwe has paid anything yet to the IMF.
"I cannot comment on our repayment schedule because I have not heard about any repayments yet," he said.
"However, they will be worried about our diamond cash just like they were worried about the oil cash in Angola and how that was used before they could come in and help that country."
Hawkins said as long as the country did not repay its outstanding debts, the IMF would not "budge a finger" to help the economic recovery programme.
Zimbabwe's outstanding arrears to the IMF have now reached $140 million at a time when the country owes the Washington-based group $550 million, Biti, the Minister of Finance, has already confirmed.
He said Zimbabwe's outstanding arrears under the Fund's Extended Credit Facility (ECF) now amount to $140 million.
The ECF replaced the Fund's Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility.
"Zimbabwe does not have the capacity to pay off the IMF's arrears from its own resources," Biti said in Harare.
"In this regard, the country will need to request cooperating partners for a concessional bridging loan or grant to settle arrears to the IMF."
He said clearance pf ECF arrears would unlock new financing arrangements from the IMF, within the context of a Fund supported financial arrangement, which would then be used to repay the bridging loan obtained from the cooperating partners.
"Zimbabwe will, however, need a track record of implementing sound macro-economic policies and assurances that arrears to other official creditors are programmed to be cleared," Biti said.
Biti has already confirmed that Zimbabwe owes multilateral institutions a grand total of $2,504 billion, of which the World Bank is owed $1,126 billion, the IMF, $550 million, the African Development Bank (AfDB) $529 million, and the European Investment Bank (EIB), $221 million.
President Robert Mugabe has said there is an urgent need for Zimbabwe to achieve external debt sustainability through a comprehensive debt relief and arrears clearance programme.
"This must be strongly supported by my government and all the development partners and creditors," President Mugabe said.
Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, has also said it is "clear that Zimbabwe cannot rehabilitate its infrastructure and move forward with its socio-economic transformation reforms if the debt overhang challenge is not urgently resolved".
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