BlackRock Intermediate Municipal Fund gets new name, strategy, team

By Toni Weeks

San Luis Obispo, Calif., Nov. 14 - BlackRock Municipal Series Trust announced it will make a change to the name, investment strategy and portfolio management team of its BlackRock Intermediate Municipal Fund.

According to a 497 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the fund's new name will be BlackRock Strategic Municipal Opportunities Fund, effective Jan. 27.

Also beginning Jan. 27, the fund will invest at least 80% of its assets in a broad selection of municipal bonds, including up to 50% of its net assets in high-yield bonds, and will no longer be required to invest at least 80% of its assets in investment-grade municipal bonds. It will also be able to invest in bonds without any constraints on maturity, in contrast to the current requirement of maintaining a dollar-weighted average maturity of between three and 10 years, and will seek an average portfolio duration of zero to 10 years.

In addition, one of the fund's benchmark indexes, the S&P Intermediate Municipal Bond index, will be replaced with a customized weighted index comprised of 65% of the returns of the S&P Municipal Bond Investment Grade index, 30% of the S&P Municipal Bond High Yield index and 5% of the Barclays Taxable Municipal: U.S. Aggregate Eligible index. The S&P Municipal Bond index will continue as the fund's second benchmark index.

Finally, Peter Hayes, James Pruskowski and Michael Kalinoski will join existing portfolio manager Theodore Jaeckel in managing the fund. Walter O'Connor and Timothy Browse will no longer be portfolio managers of the fund.

Wilmington, Del.-based BlackRock Advisors, LLC is the fund's investment manager.

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