Wachovia bank has frozen the accounts of nearly 1,000 colleges, leaving institutions unable to access billions of dollars they depend on for salaries, campus construction, and debt payments.
The freeze, which affects most institutions that invest their endowment income and other assets through Commonfund, has some colleges worried that they won’t be able to make payroll this period, said Verne O. Sedlacek, president and chief executive of Commonfund, which manages investments for nonprofit institutions. Many colleges use the organization’s short-term investment fund for operating expenses, “almost as a checking account,” he said.
As of last Friday, the Common Fund for Short Term Investments managed approximately $9.3-billion in assets for 900 colleges and roughly 100 private schools.
Wachovia, which agreed to sell its banking operations to Citigroup this week, announced on Monday that it was resigning as trustee of the fund and would allow plan participants to withdraw only 10 percent of their assets—the value of the securities that had reached maturity. That percentage grew to 26 percent on Tuesday as additional securities reached maturity, and is expected to reach 57 percent by the end of this year and 74 percent by the end of 2009.
But unless the credit markets thaw, enabling a new trustee to sell more of the short-term securities in the fund, colleges won’t be able to access all their money until at least 2010. …
The freeze could have the biggest effect on smaller institutions like Bethany College, in Kansas, which has $700,000 invested in the fund. President Edward F. Leonard III said his institution has enough money to cover costs for now because students just paid tuition, but he’s worried about the second semester, when the college typically dips into its short-term funds to pay for a variety of operating expenses.
“All colleges ride a cash roller coaster,” he said. “But the smaller colleges, like Bethany, we feel those bumps more than others do.”
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