The Form 40-8F-A Files dataset is a complete EDGAR archive of applications by registered investment companies for a Section 8(f) deregistration order on the specific ground of abandonment of registration. Each record corresponds to one EDGAR submission of a Form 40-8F-A or its amendment variant Form 40-8F-A/A, identified by the SEC accession number and filed by the deregistering fund itself. The dataset spans a closed historical window from 1 July 1999 through August 2004, when the SEC retired the 40-8F family and consolidated all Section 8(f) deregistration grounds onto the unified successor Form N-8F. Containers are distributed in ZIP format, and individual record files are TXT (the SGML-wrapped form body and any text exhibits), JSON (the per-record metadata.json manifest), and HTML (a minority of submissions).
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Form 40-8F-A is a historical paper-style application by which a registered investment company asked the Commission to enter an order under Section 8(f) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 declaring that the company had ceased to be an investment company. The "40-8F-A" tag designated the abandonment-of-registration variant of the Section 8(f) deregistration family, distinguished from companion submission types covering the other three deregistration grounds (mergers, liquidations, and election to be regulated as a business development company). The submission type was retired by the SEC effective August 2004 and superseded by the consolidated Form N-8F, which combined all four deregistration grounds into a single instrument. The amended variant 40-8F-A/A carries the identical internal structure and supersedes or corrects an earlier application.
A notable late-period quirk: well before the submission tag was retired, filers had begun using the textual body of the successor Form N-8F inside their 40-8F-A submissions, so the document body inside a 2003-2004 record is normally headed "FORM N-8F" even though the EDGAR submission tag — and the dataset's formType field — remains 40-8F-A. The dataset covers the entire EDGAR-era population of this submission type for the 1 July 1999 through August 2004 window; pre-EDGAR paper filings and later abandonment applications filed under the successor Form N-8F tag are out of scope.
Substantively, the application is a long, numbered questionnaire eliciting (i) registrant identifying information, (ii) the factual basis for deregistration, (iii) any distributions made to shareholders in connection with the wind-up, (iv) the disposition of remaining assets and liabilities, (v) the events leading to deregistration and their associated expenses, (vi) the wind-up status of the business and any pending litigation, and (vii) a sworn verification by an executing officer.
A single record in the Form 40-8F-A Files dataset is one EDGAR submission of either a Form 40-8F-A or a Form 40-8F-A/A. The record's identity is the 18-digit SEC accession number assigned at filing. On disk, each record is materialized as one folder whose name is the accession number with dashes stripped — for example, accession 0000950123-04-008568 becomes folder 000095012304008568. Inside that folder sit a metadata.json manifest plus the original EDGAR document files for the submission, with image attachments excluded. Per-filing folders are grouped into monthly ZIP containers for distribution, but the unit of analysis is the individual accession.
A single record is composed of three concentric layers:
metadata.json manifest, which serializes the EDGAR submission header — form type, accession, filing timestamp, filer entities, document inventory, and canonical EDGAR URLs — into a structured JSON object.The dataset preserves the SGML envelope and the original EDGAR filenames so that the bytes of the archived submission can be recovered without round-tripping through reformatted or re-rendered representations.
metadata.json manifestTop-level keys identify the filing and its primary URLs:
formType — 40-8F-A or 40-8F-A/A.accessionNo — the canonical dashed accession number.filedAt — ISO-8601 timestamp with the EDGAR timezone offset.description — a human-readable label such as "Form 40-8F-A - Application for deregistration, abandonment of registration."linkToFilingDetails — URL of the primary form document on sec.gov.linkToTxt — URL of the consolidated SGML submission archive (the full .txt bundle).linkToHtml — URL of the EDGAR index page for the submission.linkToXbrl — present but empty; Form 40-8F-A has no XBRL component.dataFiles — present but always an empty array, for the same reason.id — a deterministic internal identifier for the record.A documentFormatFiles array enumerates each attached document with sequence, size (in bytes, encoded as a string), documentUrl, description, and type. The complete-submission text file (the consolidated SGML bundle that EDGAR generates for every filing) appears as an additional entry whose type and sequence are blank — that whitespace placeholder distinguishes it from the per-document attachments above it.
An entities array carries one element per filer on the submission. For Form 40-8F-A there is typically a single filer — the deregistering fund itself. Each entity element captures fields useful for joining to other SEC datasets:
companyName — the registrant's name with a trailing parenthetical role indicator (e.g., (Filer)).cik — zero-padded 10-digit Central Index Key.fileNo — the Investment Company Act file number, always beginning with the 811- prefix that uniquely identifies registered investment companies.irsNo — the filer's IRS employer identification number, often zeroed for funds.fiscalYearEnd — encoded as MMDD.act — the statute code, set to 40 for the Investment Company Act of 1940.type — the entity-level form-type tag, matching the submission's formType.filmNo — the EDGAR film number assigned at acceptance.The substantive content of a record lives in the document file referenced by linkToFilingDetails, customarily a single .txt file whose body is wrapped in EDGAR's classic SGML <DOCUMENT> envelope. The envelope opens with header tags <TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, <FILENAME>, and <DESCRIPTION>, followed by a <TEXT> block whose contents are paginated by <PAGE> markers. Inside the <TEXT> block, the form body is rendered as fixed-width plain text reproducing the printed application's layout: section headings in capitals, numbered question stems, indented prompts, and bracketed checkboxes ([X] and [ ]) for multiple-choice and yes/no responses.
Because the form descends from a printed paper application, the body is typically sparse for abandonment filings — long stretches of blank prompts and unchecked boxes are normal, and substantive answers are concentrated in the limited subset of questions that actually applies to abandonment.
The questionnaire is organized into six numbered roman-numeral sections plus a verification block. The full set of twenty-six questions covers all four deregistration grounds, but abandonment filers respond to a strict subset (Q1-Q15, Q24, Q25, plus the verification).
I. General Identifying Information (Q1-Q15). Q1 elicits the basis for the application by checking one of four grounds (merger, liquidation, abandonment of registration, or election to be regulated as a business development company). Q2-Q4 capture the fund's exact name, the Investment Company Act file number (811-…), and whether the application is initial or an amendment. Q5-Q7 record the principal executive office address, the staff contact responsible for fielding Commission questions, and the records-custody party charged with continuing recordkeeping under Rules 31a-1 and 31a-2 (an obligation that survives deregistration). Q8-Q10 capture the fund's classification (management company, unit investment trust, or face-amount certificate company), its open-end/closed-end subclassification where applicable, and the state or jurisdiction of organization. Q11-Q12 require a five-year history of investment advisers (including sub-advisers) and principal underwriters even where contracts have been terminated. Q13-Q14 cover UIT-specific disclosures: depositor and trustee identities, and whether a separate registered UIT (e.g., an insurance company separate account) served as a vehicle for investment in the fund. Q15 records board approval and shareholder approval of the deregistration decision, with dates of votes or, if no shareholder vote was taken, an explanation of why approval was not required.
II. Distributions to Shareholders (Q16-Q19). Q16 captures whether and when assets were distributed to shareholders in connection with the merger or liquidation, the basis of distribution (net assets vs. pro rata vs. other), and any in-kind distributions. Q17 is closed-end-fund-specific and addresses senior securities. Q18 confirms whether all assets have been distributed and, if not, the count and identity of remaining shareholders. Q19 covers shareholders who have not yet received their final distributions.
III. Assets and Liabilities (Q20-Q21). Q20 records any assets retained by the fund as of the filing date, including the rationale for retention and whether retained assets remain invested in securities. Q21 records outstanding debts and other liabilities and the fund's plan for satisfying them.
IV. Information About Events Leading to Deregistration (Q22-Q23). Q22 itemizes legal, accounting, and other expenses incurred in connection with the merger or liquidation, plus their allocation, payor, and treatment of unamortized expenses. Q23 references any prior application to the Commission relevant to the wind-up, citing release numbers or, where no order has issued, file numbers and filing dates.
V. Conclusion of Fund Business (Q24-Q25). Q24 discloses any pending litigation or administrative proceedings to which the fund is a party. Q25 discloses any ongoing business activities other than those necessary for winding up the fund's affairs.
VI. Mergers Only (Q26). Identifies the surviving fund's name and Investment Company Act file number and references the agreement of merger as either a previously filed exhibit (with file number, form type, and filing date) or a new exhibit attached to the application. This section is left blank for abandonment filings.
Verification. A signed attestation by the executing officer — typically the chief executive officer or an equivalent signatory — affirming authorization to file and the truth of the contents. Signatures appear in /s/Name conformed form, accompanied by the printed name and title; this block is the structural terminator of the form body.
For an abandonment-of-registration application, the responsive content is concentrated in Q1-Q15, Q24, and Q25, plus the verification. Sections II, III, IV, and VI are normally left blank or marked not applicable. This sparsity is a structural feature of the form, not an extraction artifact: the instructions to Q1 explicitly direct abandonment filers to skip Q16-Q23 and Q26.
Each record bundles, at minimum, the metadata.json manifest plus the primary form document. Where additional EDGAR-attached documents accompanied the submission — for example, exhibit text or HTML renderings — those files are preserved alongside the primary document with their original EDGAR filenames intact. The file types found in the dataset are TXT (the SGML-wrapped form body and any text exhibits), JSON (the manifest), and HTML (a minority of submissions). The full SGML envelope of each document is retained, so downstream consumers can recover the original <DOCUMENT>, <TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, <FILENAME>, <DESCRIPTION>, and <TEXT> structure as filed.
Image attachments from the original EDGAR submission are excluded from the per-filing folder; any scanned exhibits referenced inside the form text are therefore represented only by their narrative description in the body. The linkToHtml URL points to the EDGAR index page hosted on sec.gov rather than to a document inside the record, and is provided as a reference rather than as bundled content. Later abandonment-of-registration applications filed under the successor Form N-8F submission tag (after August 2004) are not part of this dataset.
The Form 40-8F-A submission type was active on EDGAR for a narrow window — the dataset covers 1 July 1999 through the form's discontinuation in August 2004 — so there is no long-arc evolution of required disclosures within the dataset's coverage. Two transitions nevertheless matter for interpretation:
40-8F-A submissions; consequently, a record's document body will normally be headed "FORM N-8F" even though the submission tag and the dataset's formType field are 40-8F-A. The EDGAR-level tag is authoritative for identifying the submission type; the document body is authoritative for the disclosure content.Records are uniformly small, plain-text SGML-wrapped documents — the form was always filed in this textual style rather than as a binary or richly formatted document. A minority of submissions include HTML renderings alongside the .txt body, but the dominant pattern is a single .txt file plus the manifest. The form is a narrative-and-checkbox questionnaire, not a financial statement filing, so records carry no embedded financial data tables and no structured tagging.
formType) and the on-document form heading can disagree for late-period filings, which carry "FORM N-8F" text within 40-8F-A submissions. Treat the EDGAR-level tag as authoritative for the submission type and the document body as authoritative for the disclosure content.40-8F-A/A) share the structure of the original application and supersede or correct earlier filings; a single deregistration episode for one fund may therefore generate multiple records linked by CIK and 811- file number rather than by accession number. There is no in-document "Amendment No." counter to rely on, so reconstructing the amendment chain requires grouping by registrant identifiers and ordering by filedAt.fileNo (the 811-… identifier) is the most reliable join key for connecting these records to other registered-investment-company datasets, because a single legal entity's CIK can change less predictably than its 811- registration identity over the wind-up period.[X], [x], lowercase variants, and occasional whitespace irregularities, and must recognize that absent or blank answers in non-applicable sections are semantically meaningful (they signal that the question does not apply to an abandonment filing) rather than data omissions.<PAGE> markers segment the body into the original printed pages and do not carry semantic meaning for the disclosure; extraction pipelines should treat them as layout artifacts./s/Name conformed form rather than image scans.The filer is the registered investment company itself, asking the SEC to issue an order declaring that it has ceased to be an investment company under Section 8(f) of the Investment Company Act of 1940. The applicant is identified on EDGAR by its Investment Company Act file number (the 811- series) and its CIK. Officers, trustees, or counsel sign the application in a representative capacity; they are not the legal filer. Form 40-8F-A/A is filed by the same applicant to amend, supplement, or correct an application already on file, typically in response to staff comments or to update facts (for example, a final liquidating distribution made after submission).
The population is narrow. It consists of entities that were registered as investment companies under Section 8(a) of the 1940 Act and seek deregistration under Section 8(f) on the specific ground of abandonment of registration. Typical applicants include:
The filer is the registrant, not its sponsor, adviser, distributor, or transfer agent.
The filing is event-driven, not periodic. It is triggered by the registrant's determination that it has abandoned, or is about to abandon, its registration as an investment company. Common circumstances:
Because Section 8(f) provides that registration continues until the SEC issues a deregistration order, the registrant remains subject to the full 1940 Act regime (reporting, governance, fee constraints) until that order issues. Filing Form 40-8F-A initiates that order; it does not by itself end investment-company status. There is no statutory filing deadline. Each registrant files Form 40-8F-A at most once, because a granted order ends its standing to file further submissions under the 811- number. Form 40-8F-A/A is filed on an as-needed basis during the pendency of the original application.
The application arises under the Investment Company Act of 1940, principally Section 8(a) (registration) and Section 8(f) (deregistration order), and is processed by the Division of Investment Management. EDGAR acceptance of these applications began in 1999; the earliest records in this dataset date from July 1999. Effective August 2004, the SEC discontinued the 40-8F family and consolidated all Section 8(f) deregistration applications onto Form N-8F. The dataset therefore spans a closed window of roughly July 1999 through August 2004. Pre-EDGAR paper filings are not included.
811- file numbers. Operating-company deregistrations under the Exchange Act use Form 15 and are outside this dataset.The most relevant comparators fall into three groups: the unified successor that replaced Form 40-8F-A (Form N-8F), its sibling 40-8F variants distinguished by deregistration ground, and adjacent exit pathways under other statutory regimes (N-54C, Form 15/15F, Form 25). Active-registration disclosures (N-1A, N-2, N-CSR, N-PORT, N-CEN) are the inverse complement, not a substitute.
The single most important comparator. In August 2004 the SEC consolidated the entire 40-8F family (40-8F-A, -B, -L, -M, -2) into Form N-8F. Same statutory basis (Section 8(f)), same SEC order sought, same end purpose. Differences:
The most easily confused. Same statute and SEC order, segregated by substantive ground:
Filer populations diverge sharply: 40-8F-A captures pre-launch and dormant shells; 40-8F-L captures operating funds that wound down; 40-8F-B captures consolidations. Studies of fund mortality use different variants depending on the exit mechanism.
Filed by BDCs to withdraw their election under Section 54 of the 1940 Act. It is an exit filing, but:
Useful jointly with 40-8F-A for mapping all 1940 Act exits, but the two are mutually exclusive by filer type.
Terminates or suspends Exchange Act reporting under Sections 12(g)/15(d). Surface similarity (ending an SEC relationship) but a different regime:
Form 15F is the foreign-private-issuer counterpart used to terminate Exchange Act registration and reporting obligations.
Operates at the exchange-listing level, not the registration level. A closed-end fund can delist via Form 25 while remaining a registered investment company. Orthogonal to 40-8F-A.
The inverse complement. N-1A and N-2 are the registration statements that 40-8F-A unwinds; N-CSR, N-PORT, and N-CEN are the ongoing reports a registered fund must file. They establish the registration that 40-8F-A terminates, but contain none of the deregistration application content.
| Axis | 40-8F-A | N-8F | 40-8F-L/B | N-54C | Form 15 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Statutory basis | ICA Sec. 8(f) | ICA Sec. 8(f) | ICA Sec. 8(f) | ICA Sec. 54 | Exchange Act 12(g)/15(d) |
| Ground | Abandonment | Any 8(f) ground | Liquidation / merger | BDC election withdrawal | Exchange Act exit |
| Procedure | Application + SEC order | Application + SEC order | Application + SEC order | Notice | Notice |
| Time window | Jul 1999 – Aug 2004 | Aug 2004 onward | Pre-Aug 2004 | Ongoing | Ongoing |
Form 40-8F-A is uniquely defined along four simultaneous axes: Section 8(f) of the 1940 Act, abandonment ground, application requiring an SEC order, and a closed July 1999 – August 2004 window. No other dataset substitutes: N-8F covers later filings, sibling 40-8F variants cover other exit grounds, N-54C covers BDCs, and Form 15/25 operate under different regimes. For complete coverage of abandoned-registration applications in this five-year window, 40-8F-A is the sole primary source; all adjacent datasets serve as context.
A small but well-defined set of professionals relies on this 1999–2004 record of abandonment-grounds deregistrations under Section 8(f) of the Investment Company Act. The fields that matter most across users are the applicant identity and CIK, the 811- file number, the stated grounds, the amendment history, and the supporting exhibits.
Counsel drafting current Form N-8F deregistrations use the older 40-8F-A filings as a precedent library. They look at how prior applicants framed grounds (failed launch, never commenced operations, abandonment before public offering), the representations on shareholder count and net assets, and the board-resolution exhibits. The dataset supports drafting, precedent search, and partner review of how analogous facts have been characterized to staff.
Paralegals locate prior applications by CIK or 811- number, confirm chronology where 40-8F-A/A amendments exist, and pull exhibits and signature pages to assemble new N-8F filings or to respond to staff comments on legacy entities.
Researchers characterize how abandonment-grounds deregistration functioned in the form's final five years. Filing volume, grounds language, and amendment frequency feed policy memos, comment letters, and historical context in regulatory analyses.
Finance and law scholars use the dataset to capture pre-launch failures and abandoned registrations that are typically invisible in commercial fund databases. Applicant identity, registration date, and stated grounds support survivorship-bias corrections, sponsor-behavior studies across affiliated fund families, and peer-reviewed work on fund formation and exit.
Reference-data teams ingest the dataset to fill the 1999–2004 gap in deregistration coverage. CIK, 811- number, and grounds drive identifier-status transitions, ensuring abandonment-grounds exits are not mislabeled as mergers, liquidations, or active registrations.
Consultants benchmark how prior applicants framed grounds, what representations were standard, and how amendments cured staff concerns. The dataset feeds internal checklists, anticipated-question lists, and timeline calibrations from initial filing to effective deregistration.
Inside asset managers, product and operations teams reconstruct the lifecycle of legacy entities, including affiliated funds that were registered but never launched. The filings serve as the authoritative SEC record for internal lifecycle ledgers and for tax, audit, or successor-entity questions years later.
In disputes over abandoned funds, forensic accountants authenticate the abandonment record, extract dates, and tie the deregistration narrative to contemporaneous filings. Accession-level documents and exhibits supply source material suitable for proceedings.
Engineers building retrieval systems over historical SEC filings include this dataset to extend Investment Company Act coverage back to 1999 and to handle a discontinued form cleanly in form-aware pipelines. TXT, HTML, and JSON files map directly into parsing, chunking, and indexing workflows so queries about 40-8F-A precedent return grounded passages.
The Form 40-8F-A Files dataset supports a focused set of workflows that depend on its specific content: applicant identity, 811- file number, Q1 grounds checkbox, Q15 board/shareholder approval explanations, Q5-Q7 contact and recordkeeping blocks, and the verification signature.
Building a precedent library for current N-8F abandonment filings. Fund counsel pulls Q15(b) free-text explanations and Q5-Q7 contact blocks across the dataset to see how prior applicants justified the absence of a shareholder vote and described pre-launch or dormant status. The output is a clause bank that feeds drafting and partner review of new Form N-8F applications on the abandonment ground.
Closing the 1999-2004 gap in fund-status reference data. Reference-data teams ingest each record's entities array (CIK, 811- file number, fiscalYearEnd, filmNo) plus filedAt to mark the deregistration event in a fund-identifier history. This prevents abandoned-registration shells from being mislabeled as active, merged, or liquidated in commercial fund databases that begin coverage after 2004.
Survivorship-bias correction for fund-formation studies. Academic researchers join the dataset to N-1A/N-2 registration records by CIK and 811- number to recover funds that registered but never launched — a population typically invisible in CRSP and Morningstar. Q1 ground selection and Q15 approval narratives separate true pre-launch abandonment from dormant-shell wind-ups.
Reconstructing amendment chains for legacy entities. Operations and paralegal teams group 40-8F-A and 40-8F-A/A records by 811- file number and order them by filedAt to rebuild the application-then-amendment sequence (there is no in-document "Amendment No." counter). The output is a complete deregistration-episode timeline used for internal lifecycle ledgers and successor-entity questions.
Form-aware retrieval over discontinued submission types. RAG engineers index the SGML-wrapped TXT bodies with Q-number-aware chunking, treating <PAGE> markers as layout artifacts and bracketed checkboxes as structured signals. The pipeline must reconcile the late-period mismatch where a record's formType is 40-8F-A but the document body is headed "FORM N-8F", so retrieval keys on the EDGAR tag while passages are sourced from the N-8F-styled text.
Litigation and forensic authentication of fund wind-ups. Forensic analysts use the verification block (the /s/Name signature, printed name, and title) together with accessionNo, filedAt, and linkToFilingDetails to authenticate the abandonment record and tie the deregistration narrative to contemporaneous filings. The accession-level documents are admissible source material for proceedings over abandoned funds.
Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-408fa-files.json
This endpoint returns dataset-level metadata along with the list of available container files. The response includes the dataset name, description, last update timestamp, earliest sample date (1999-07-01), total record and size counters, the form types covered (40-8F-A and 40-8F-A/A), the container format (ZIP), and the file types found inside each container (TXT, JSON, HTML). It also exposes the full dataset download URL and, for every container, its key, size, record count, last updated timestamp, and direct download URL. Polling this endpoint is the recommended way to monitor which containers have been refreshed in the most recent update run and to decide which containers to download incrementally.
This endpoint does not require an API key.
Example response:
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{
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"datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-69f7-b58c-ce38c08d7dcd",
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"datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-408fa-files.zip",
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"name": "Form 40-8F-A Files Dataset",
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"updatedAt": "2026-04-15T18:16:39.162Z",
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"earliestSampleDate": "1999-07-01",
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"totalRecords": 189,
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"totalSize": 878671,
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"formTypes": ["40-8F-A", "40-8F-A/A"],
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"containerFormat": "ZIP",
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"fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON", "HTML"],
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"containers": [
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{
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"downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-408fa-files/2004/2004-08.zip",
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"key": "2004/2004-08.zip",
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"size": 42318,
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"records": 6,
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"updatedAt": "2026-04-15T18:16:39.162Z"
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}
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]
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}
Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-408fa-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Use this URL to download the complete Form 40-8F-A Files archive as a single ZIP file containing every monthly container from July 1999 through August 2004. This endpoint requires an API key.
Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-408fa-files/2004/2004-08.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Use this URL pattern to download an individual monthly container instead of the full dataset. Replace the year and month segments with the container key returned by the dataset index API. This endpoint requires an API key.
The dataset covers Form 40-8F-A and its amendment variant Form 40-8F-A/A — the abandonment-of-registration variant of the Section 8(f) deregistration application family under the Investment Company Act of 1940. It does not include the sibling 40-8F variants for liquidation, merger, or change in business, and it does not include the consolidated successor Form N-8F.
One record is a single EDGAR submission of a Form 40-8F-A or Form 40-8F-A/A, identified by its 18-digit SEC accession number. Each record is materialized as a per-filing folder containing a metadata.json manifest plus the original EDGAR document files (typically an SGML-wrapped .txt form body, occasionally an HTML rendering or text exhibit), with image attachments excluded.
The filer is the registered investment company itself, identified on EDGAR by its CIK and its Investment Company Act 811- file number. Typical applicants are open-end and closed-end management companies, unit investment trusts, and face-amount certificate companies seeking a Section 8(f) deregistration order on the specific ground of abandonment of registration; officers, trustees, or counsel sign in a representative capacity but are not the legal filer.
The dataset covers a closed historical window from 1 July 1999 — when EDGAR began accepting these applications — through August 2004, when the SEC discontinued the 40-8F family and consolidated all Section 8(f) deregistration grounds onto the unified Form N-8F. Pre-EDGAR paper filings and any post-August 2004 abandonment applications filed under the Form N-8F tag are out of scope.
Form N-8F is the direct successor that replaced the entire 40-8F family in August 2004. Both share the same statutory basis (Section 8(f)) and seek the same SEC deregistration order, but N-8F is one multi-purpose application with check-box grounds while 40-8F-A is a dedicated form for the abandonment ground only; a continuous Section 8(f) deregistration series requires both datasets joined at the August 2004 boundary.
Containers are distributed as monthly ZIP archives. Inside each container, per-record folders (named by undashed accession number) hold three file types: TXT (the SGML-wrapped form body and any text exhibits), JSON (the per-record metadata.json manifest), and HTML (a minority of submissions that include an HTML rendering alongside the text body).
Well before the 40-8F-A submission tag was formally retired in August 2004, filers had begun using the textual body of the successor Form N-8F inside their 40-8F-A submissions. As a result, late-period records (typically 2003-2004) carry a document body headed "FORM N-8F" even though the EDGAR submission tag and the dataset's formType field remain 40-8F-A. Treat the EDGAR-level tag as authoritative for the submission type and the document body as authoritative for the disclosure content.