ANZ underwrites some losses on retail CDO funds
ANZ looks like wearing some losses from having to partly bail out a market-linked fund in New Zealand managed by its funds management joint venture with ING.ING yesterday announced a new proposal to investors with NZ$520 million in the Diversified Yield Fund and Regular Income Fund, two funds frozen for almost a year. There are about 8000 investors in the two funds.Both of these funds were heavily exposed to collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) that have collapsed during the Credit Crunch. ANZ has been criticised for encouraging bank customers to invest in the funds.ANZ and ING first lent money to the funds to try and work a way to partly return capital to investors in December 2008. The earlier plan was to wind up the funds and to pay NZ$100 million in cash immediately to investors.The new plan from ING and ANZ is for the two funds to make a guaranteed payout of 83 cents in the dollar in five years for the Diversified Yield Fund and 86 cents for the Regular Income Fund. An alternative is that investors cash out of their funds now with 60 cents and 62 cents respectively, which is about two and a half times the market price of units in the fund at present.