Mass Mutual’s OppenheimerFunds, Franklin Resources are among the island’s biggest institutional creditors
OppenheimerFunds Inc.’s municipal bond-fund holders might not want to check their share prices tomorrow. The OppenheimerFunds Rochester Fund Municipals and other funds overseen by the asset manager, a unit of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., represent the biggest institutional holdings of Puerto Rican debt. At $13.9 billion, including the $2.13 million owned by Mass Mutual, the debt is 58 percent of the uninsured, unrefunded $24.2 billion of publicly reported holdings in the bankrupt commonwealth’s bonds by asset managers. Prices on Puerto Rico’s general obligation bonds, which were already trading at about 50 cents on the dollar before the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria, plunged to a record low of 32 cents Wednesday morning after President Donald Trump suggested the island’s $74 billion debt needs to be wiped out.
Bloomberg Businessweek
By Nancy Moran and Martin Z Braun
October 4, 2017, 9:39 AM PDT