Jun 12: Mary Miller on bondholder rights

Mary Miller, head of fixed income at T Rowe Price, a US asset manager with over $380bn of assets under management, says that it is unusual for her to take a public stance on a controversial matter. However, she recently sent a letter to Senators about concerns that mortgage modification laws would adversely affect investors owning bonds backed by mortgages. She is also concerned about the precedents set by the terms demanded by the government in its rescue of Chrysler and GM, where creditors had to take losses before other entities that in theory should have absorbed losses first. "For bondholders generally, there is a great deal of concern about contract law and how that operates in the bond market. I would say that in this credit crunch we've had periods of great confusion around how things should work…We've had odd situations where the presence of say, credit default swaps and cash bonds can create very strange outcomes."