Royce Closes Two Funds to New Investors

According to the announcement, the Royce Premier Fund and Royce Micro-Cap Fund will be open only to existing shareholders and existing relationships. Royce said each fund is making this change in an effort to moderate cash flows, which have been considerable in light of the recent relative outperformance by small-cap and micro-cap companies.

Each fund will remain open to the following:

• existing investors—in their own name or as beneficial owner of shares held in someone else’s name—for example, a nominee, custodian or omnibus account holding shares for the benefit of an investor would not be eligible to open a new account for its own benefit or for the benefit of another investor, but the investor would be eligible to open a new account in that fund;
• registered investment advisers with existing clients in the fund—RIAs who currently have clients in the fund may open new accounts as well as add to existing accounts in whichever fund had been held;
• certain pre-approved asset allocation based investment programs and, for a limited time, initial investments by certain institutional investors approved by the funds’ investment adviser;
• pre-approved retirement plans (401(k) plans, 457 plans, employer-sponsored 403(b) plans, defined benefit pension plans, profit-sharing plans, nonqualified deferred compensation plans, and other similar employer-sponsored retirement plans and rollover accounts from such plans to individual retirement vehicles such as traditional and Roth IRAs) offered through certain broker/dealers with accounts held on the books of the fund through omnibus account arrangements (either at the plan level or at the level of the financial intermediary).

Existing shareholders in other Royce Funds will not be permitted to open new accounts in Royce Premier or Royce Micro-Cap Fund after today, nor will they be permitted to acquire shares of these funds by exchange. Fund distributions will continue to be reinvested, unless a shareholder has elected otherwise.