Three More Funds Go Under

From Bloomberg:

Oddo & Cie, a French stockbroker and money manager, plans to close three funds totaling 1 billion euros ($1.37 billion), citing the ``unprecedented'' crisis in the U.S. asset-backed securities market.

Oddo said it will wind down the funds within the ``shortest possible time frame'' because of a plunge in prices for collateralized debt obligations, notes backed by other bonds, loans and their derivatives.

The highest level of defaults in 10 years on U.S. mortgages drove the risk premium on corporate bonds in Europe to the widest in at least three years yesterday, based on prices for credit-default swaps. Commerzbank AG, Germany's second-biggest bank by assets, yesterday said it expects to make provisions of about 80 million euros for potential loan losses tied to the U.S. subprime mortgage market, and IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG in Dusseldorf said it was scrapping its earnings forecast as ``massive uncertainty'' threatens access to funding.

``Like many actors, we have tried to revitalize the performance of our funds by investing in CDOs,'' Arnaud Ploix, a spokesman for Paris-based Oddo, said in an interview today. ``Like others, we noticed recent problems with short-term liquidity and were caught out by the subprime dilemma.''