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https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-da...inancial-markets-11589982288?mod=hp_lead_pos5
An urgent call reached Ronald O’Hanley, State Street Corp. ’s chief executive, as he sat in his office in downtown Boston. It was 8 a.m. on Monday, March 16.
A senior deputy told him corporate treasurers and pension managers, panicked by the growing economic damage from the Covid-19 pandemic, were pulling billions of dollars from certain money-market funds. This was forcing the funds to try to sell some of the bonds they held.
But there were almost no buyers. Everybody was suddenly desperate for cash.
He and the deputy, asset-management executive Cyrus Taraporevala, had spoken the night before, wrestling with how investors would respond to an emergency interest-rate cut from the Federal Reserve.
Now, they had their answer. In his 34 years in finance, Mr. O’Hanley had weathered plenty of meltdowns, but never one like this.
“The market is fearing the worst,” Mr. O’Hanley told him.
March 16 was the day a microscopic virus brought the financial system to the brink. Few realized how close it came to going over the edge entirely.
An urgent call reached Ronald O’Hanley, State Street Corp. ’s chief executive, as he sat in his office in downtown Boston. It was 8 a.m. on Monday, March 16.
A senior deputy told him corporate treasurers and pension managers, panicked by the growing economic damage from the Covid-19 pandemic, were pulling billions of dollars from certain money-market funds. This was forcing the funds to try to sell some of the bonds they held.
But there were almost no buyers. Everybody was suddenly desperate for cash.
He and the deputy, asset-management executive Cyrus Taraporevala, had spoken the night before, wrestling with how investors would respond to an emergency interest-rate cut from the Federal Reserve.
Now, they had their answer. In his 34 years in finance, Mr. O’Hanley had weathered plenty of meltdowns, but never one like this.
“The market is fearing the worst,” Mr. O’Hanley told him.
March 16 was the day a microscopic virus brought the financial system to the brink. Few realized how close it came to going over the edge entirely.
