Two More Putnam Funds to Face Votes on Open-Ending

Putnam recently announced that two more funds, the Putnam California Investment Grade Municipal Trust (PCA), and the Putnam New York Investment Grade Municipal Trust (PMN) will have shareholder votes on converting from a closed-end structure. In these cases, the proposals are to merge the funds into similar open-end funds, and like with the PMH proposal, each proposal has been submitted by a shareholder.

Putnam has not filed a proxy statement, so we cannot see what the shareholders' arguments are yet. I think it is safe to assume that the double-digit discounts will be a major part of the arguments though. The shareholder meeting is scheduled for the end of October, so Putnam should file the proxy statement soon.

The Putnam open-ending proposals that were triggered by lifeboat provisions did not really have any chance of passing, but it will be interesting to see how much support there is for these shareholder submitted proposals.

PCA-PMN 1-yr comparison chart: