Nuveen Investments Inc., the largest U.S. manager of closed-end funds, is seeking new financing for a large portion of the auction-rate securities sold by its taxable funds.
Nuveen plans to begin announcing specific agreements by the end of March but it may take four to six months to complete refinancing for all the taxable funds. Nuveen sponsors 120 closed-end funds, including 100 that have leverage and together have issued $15.4 billion of auction- rate securities. It has 13 taxable leveraged funds that invest in equities and government and corporate debt, and have issued $4.3 billion of the securities. The company has 87 municipal- bond funds with $11.1 billion in auction-rate securities.
Nuveen’s move comes at a time when auctions began to fail amid investor concern over trouble bond insurers that stuck preferred shareholders with about $60 billion in securities they couldn’t sell.
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