Form 40-8F-M Files Dataset

The Form 40-8F-M Files Dataset is a structured collection of EDGAR filings in which a registered investment company applies to the SEC for an order under Section 8(f) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 declaring that it has ceased to be an investment company by reason of merger into another registered fund. Each record corresponds to one EDGAR accession of form type 40-8F-M (an initial application) or 40-8F-M/A (an amendment), packaged as a per-accession folder containing one metadata.json plus the primary Form N-8F application document encoded as inline HTML or plain ASCII text. The applicant is the disappearing fund (open-end mutual fund, closed-end fund, unit investment trust, or registrant trust whose sole or final series has been merged out); the acquiring fund is identified inside the application but does not file in that capacity. Records are grouped into monthly ZIP containers organized as <year>/<year>-<month>.zip, with EDGAR coverage of this submission type running from June 1999 forward.

Dataset APIs

Dataset Files

What This Dataset Contains

The dataset captures completed fund-into-fund mergers documented through Section 8(f) deregistration applications. The EDGAR form code 40-8F-M is reserved for the merger flavor of these applications: the registrant fund has merged into or consolidated with another registered investment company, has wound up its own affairs, and is asking the Commission to issue an order declaring that it has ceased to be an investment company so that its registration under the 1940 Act can be terminated.

Although the EDGAR form-type label is 40-8F-M, the substantive paper form rendered inside the document is Form N-8F, "Application for Deregistration of Certain Registered Investment Companies" (OMB Number 3235-0157, SEC 1691). The same N-8F template is used regardless of whether the trigger is a merger, a liquidation, an abandonment of registration, or an election of status as a Business Development Company; the EDGAR form code identifies which trigger applies, and 40-8F-M flags the merger trigger specifically. A 40-8F-M/A accession re-files a complete N-8F application reflecting the amendment rather than transmitting only a delta.

The file types found in the dataset are TXT, JSON, and HTML. In practice each record carries exactly one JSON metadata file plus one primary application document in either HTM or TXT encoding. Standalone exhibit files are uncommon: when the merger or reorganization agreement needs to be referenced, the application typically cross-references a prior EDGAR filing (such as a Form N-14 registration statement) rather than re-attaching the agreement. The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers, with EDGAR coverage running from June 1999 forward; pre-EDGAR Section 8(f) merger applications exist only as paper records.

Content Structure of a Single Record

A single record in the Form 40-8F-M Files Dataset corresponds to one EDGAR accession. Each record is materialized on disk as a per-accession folder whose name is the EDGAR accession number with dashes stripped (for example, accession 0000894189-04-000230 becomes folder 000089418904000230). Inside the folder sit exactly one metadata.json describing the submission and the EDGAR document(s) that compose the filing itself. One record is one accession folder extracted from one of the monthly archives.

A record has two layers:

1. Submission metadata — a single metadata.json describing the EDGAR submission, the filer, and the documents contained in it.
2. Submission documents — one primary application document, encoded either as inline HTML (.htm) wrapped in EDGAR's <DOCUMENT> SGML envelope or as plain monospaced ASCII text (.txt) wrapped in the same envelope. Image files that may have been part of the original EDGAR submission are not retained. The catch-all "Complete submission text file" produced by EDGAR (the bundled .txt envelope of the entire accession) is referenced from metadata but is not stored as a separate on-disk file in the record folder.

The metadata.json block

The metadata file carries submission-level identifiers, filing timestamps, a document inventory, and filer entity information. Top-level fields include:

• formType — "40-8F-M" or "40-8F-M/A".
• accessionNo — canonical dashed EDGAR accession (for example 0000894189-04-000230).
• description — plain-English form description, such as "Form 40-8F-M - Application for deregistration, merger" or, for amendments, "Form 40-8F-M/A - Application for deregistration, merger: [Amend]".
• filedAt — ISO-8601 timestamp with timezone offset (for example "2004-02-12T10:10:15-05:00").
• linkToFilingDetails — URL to the primary document on www.sec.gov/Archives.
• linkToTxt — URL to the full submission .txt on EDGAR (the SGML envelope containing all documents of the accession).
• linkToHtml — URL to the EDGAR filing index page (...-index.htm).
• linkToXbrl — empty string for this form type.
• id — 32-character hex identifier for the record.
• documentFormatFiles — array of objects describing each submission document. Each item carries sequence (a string, typically "1" for the primary document and a single space " " for the catch-all complete submission text file), size (byte count as a string), documentUrl, description, and type (mirrors the form type for the primary document; a single space for the complete-submission entry).
• entities — array of filer entities. Each entity carries companyName (with an EDGAR role suffix such as "(Filer)"), cik (zero-padded 10-digit string), fileNo (Investment Company Act file number using the 811-xxxxx prefix), irsNo, stateOfIncorporation (two-letter state code such as "DE" or "MA"), fiscalYearEnd (MMDD), act ("40" for the Investment Company Act of 1940), type (mirrors the top-level form type), and filmNo (EDGAR film number).
• dataFiles — empty array.

The entities array typically contains a single filer (the deregistering fund). The fileNo field uses the 811-xxxxx Investment Company Act prefix, which is the same identifier reported inside Item 3 of the application body, providing a reliable consistency check between metadata and document content.

The application document — Form N-8F

The application document carries the substantive content. It opens with the EDGAR document wrapper (<DOCUMENT>, <TYPE>40-8F-M, <SEQUENCE>1, <FILENAME>, <DESCRIPTION>, <TEXT>), then renders Form N-8F as a fixed numbered-question template under six sections plus a verification block. The same six-section organization governs both initial and amended filings.

I. General Identifying Information (questions 1–15)

Establishes who the applicant is and what kind of event triggered the deregistration.

• Item 1 — four-way checkbox identifying the reason for deregistration: Merger, Liquidation, Abandonment of Registration, or Election of status as a business development company. For this dataset the box is always Merger.
• Items 2–6 — the fund's name; its 1940 Act file number (in the 811-xxxxx series); an Initial Application vs Amendment checkbox; the principal executive office address; and a contact person with phone number for SEC staff questions.
• Item 7 — person or entity responsible for maintaining and preserving the fund's records under Investment Company Act rules 31a-1 and 31a-2.
• Items 8–9 — fund classification (management company, unit investment trust, or face-amount certificate company) and, for management companies, open-end vs closed-end status.
• Item 10 — state of organization.
• Items 11–12 — investment advisers (including sub-advisers) and principal underwriters used over the prior five years.
• Items 13–14 — unit-investment-trust-specific (depositor and trustee identification, and whether the UIT served as an insurance company separate account or other vehicle); generally not applicable to merger filings of management companies.
• Item 15 — corporate approvals: 15(a) board approval of the merger with vote date; 15(b) shareholder approval with vote date.

II. Distributions to Shareholders (questions 16–19)

Addresses how shareholder interests were settled. Covers the dates and mechanics of any distributions, whether distributions were pro rata or computed by reference to net assets, in-kind treatment where applicable (more relevant in the liquidation flavor of N-8F but answered here for completeness), and the number and relationship of any shareholders remaining at the time of the application.

III. Assets and Liabilities (questions 20–21)

Item 20 describes any assets retained by the fund after the merger, the type and amount of those assets, the reason they were retained, and whether they will be invested in securities pending final wind-up. Item 21 reports any outstanding debts or liabilities of the fund.

IV. Information About Event(s) Leading to Request for Deregistration (questions 22–23)

The transactional core of the application. Item 22 itemizes the expenses of the merger, typically broken down into legal, accounting, and an "other" bucket (which often itemizes state deregistration filings, early termination fees, proxy solicitation, mailing, and investor communication costs), and explains how those expenses were allocated and paid. Item 23 references any prior application filed regarding the same transaction.

V. Conclusion of Fund Business (questions 24–25)

Item 24 discloses pending or threatened litigation and administrative proceedings involving the fund. Item 25 confirms whether any continuing business activities exist beyond the winding up necessary to achieve deregistration.

VI. Mergers Only (question 26)

Dataset-defining. Because every record in the 40-8F-M dataset is a merger application, Section VI is always populated. Item 26 names the surviving (acquiring) fund, gives its Investment Company Act file number, and where applicable identifies the file number, form type, and filing date of the merger or reorganization agreement already on file with the Commission (typically a Form N-14 registration statement covering the reorganization). Item 26 is the most reliable structured source of surviving-fund identity in the record.

Verification

The application closes with a verification block executed by an officer of the applicant fund. The verification carries the officer's signature (often rendered as /s/ Name), the officer's title (commonly President, Treasurer, Secretary, or a combination), and the execution date.

What is included in a record

Each record packages, on disk:

• The metadata.json file with the structured fields described above.
• The primary Form N-8F application document (HTML or SGML/text), which contains the entire numbered questionnaire and the verification block. For amendments, the primary document is a complete re-filing of the questionnaire rather than a redline.

What is excluded or referenced separately

• Image files that may have been part of the original EDGAR submission are not included.
• The full EDGAR "Complete submission text file" — the single .txt envelope that EDGAR generates to bundle every document of an accession — is referenced by URL via linkToTxt and appears as an entry in documentFormatFiles, but it is not extracted as a standalone file inside the per-accession folder. Only the primary application document sits on disk next to metadata.json.
• Underlying merger or reorganization agreements are typically not attached as exhibits to the 40-8F-M itself; they are incorporated by reference to the related Form N-14 filing identified in Item 26.
• The order issued by the Commission in response to the application is a separate SEC release and is not part of the applicant's filing.

Format conventions and historical variation

Form 40-8F-M filings reach EDGAR in two document encodings, both wrapped in the standard EDGAR <DOCUMENT> SGML envelope.

• The plain-text variant is monospaced ASCII broken into pages by <PAGE> markers, typical of earlier filings and of filers using legacy text-based EDGARizers.
• The HTML variant inlines an <HTML> body inside the <TEXT> tag and is often produced by third-party preparation tools.

Either way, the substantive content is the same Form N-8F template under the same six section headings and the same numbered questions; the encoding affects layout but not the disclosure content. Section headings (the Roman-numeral parts and the Arabic-numbered items) are stable enough to anchor extraction across both encodings.

Interpretation and extraction notes

• A 40-8F-M/A is a complete re-filing of the application rather than a delta. Reading an amendment in isolation gives a full picture of the deregistration request as amended; reconstructing what changed requires comparing the amendment against the prior accession.
• Board and shareholder approval dates live inside Item 15, expense itemizations inside Item 22, and surviving-fund identity inside Item 26. These fields are typed as form prose rather than structured key-value pairs, so machine extraction depends on parsing the question-numbered sections of the document body. The Roman-numeral section headers and Arabic-numbered item labels are reliable anchor points.
• The entities[].fileNo field in metadata mirrors the 811-xxxxx value reported in Item 3, and the surviving fund's file number in Item 26 is typically not duplicated into metadata; metadata reflects only the deregistering filer.
• HTML-encoded filings preserve question numbering through visible markup, while text-encoded filings rely on whitespace-aligned numbering and <PAGE> breaks; downstream parsers usually need to handle both shapes.
• Because every record in this dataset is a merger application, Section VI ("Mergers Only") is universally populated; this is the structural feature that distinguishes the 40-8F-M flavor of N-8F filings from the liquidation, abandonment, and BDC-election flavors filed under sibling EDGAR form codes.

Who Files or Publishes This Dataset, and When

Who files the record

The filer is a registered investment company applying to the SEC for an order under Section 8(f) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 declaring that it has ceased to be an investment company because it has merged or consolidated into another registered investment company. The applicant of record on EDGAR is the entity that is exiting the Act, identified by its own CIK; the acquiring or surviving fund is named in the application as the counterparty but does not file in that capacity.

In practice, the filing population consists of:

• open-end management investment companies (mutual funds), most often a single series of a series trust that has been merged into another series in the same complex or in an unaffiliated complex;
• closed-end management investment companies that have been combined with another closed-end fund or rolled into an open-end fund;
• unit investment trusts and other registered investment companies combined with another registered fund;
• the entire registrant (a trust, corporation, or limited partnership) where every series or its sole portfolio has been merged out and the shell is being deregistered.

The board of trustees or directors authorizes the application, and counsel or an officer typically signs and verifies it under Rule 0-2. Where the applicant entity has already been dissolved, the surviving fund, sponsor, or counsel files on its behalf, but the legal applicant remains the former registered investment company.

When the record is created or required

The filing is event-driven, not periodic. The trigger is the merger or consolidation of the registered investment company into another registered investment company, followed by the applicant's decision to obtain the Section 8(f) deregistration order. A typical sequence:

1. The target fund's board approves a plan of reorganization, usually relying on Rule 17a-8 for affiliated combinations.
2. A Form N-14 registration statement is filed for the surviving fund and proxy materials are distributed to target-fund shareholders.
3. Shareholders of the target fund approve the reorganization.
4. The reorganization closes; assets and liabilities transfer to the acquiring fund in exchange for its shares, which are distributed to former target shareholders.
5. After closing, the former target fund (or a person filing on its behalf) submits Form 40-8F-M.

There is no fixed statutory deadline keyed to the closing date. Applicants nonetheless file promptly because, until the Section 8(f) order takes effect, the entity remains a registered investment company subject to the Act's substantive and reporting requirements. A 40-8F-M/A is an amendment to a pending application, most often filed in response to staff comments to correct facts, add exhibits or verifications, or supplement the Rule 0-2 showing. Multiple 40-8F-M and 40-8F-M/A submissions sharing the same applicant and reorganization should be treated as one application sequence.

Important distinctions

• Liquidation vs. merger. A registered fund that winds up by liquidating its portfolio and distributing cash, rather than combining with another registered fund, files under the liquidation variant (EDGAR code 40-8F-L), not 40-8F-M.
• Abandonment. Entities that registered but never commenced operations, or ceased operations without a merger or formal liquidation, file under the abandonment variant (40-8F-B).
• Series-level vs. registrant-level. When a single series of an umbrella trust merges into another series and the trust itself remains a registrant, no 40-8F-M is filed; the merger is reflected in the trust's ongoing reporting. A 40-8F-M is filed only where the legal applicant entity itself has ceased to be an investment company.
• Applicant vs. surviving fund. The applicant is the entity exiting the Act, not the acquiring fund. The surviving fund continues reporting under its own registration.
• Operating companies. Operating issuers do not use any 40-8F variant; they terminate Exchange Act reporting via Form 15. The 40-8F-M dataset is exclusively a 1940 Act, registered-investment-company artifact.
• Business development companies. A BDC withdrawing its election under Section 54 of the Act files Form N-54C, not Form 40-8F-M.
• Unregistered and foreign funds. Funds never registered with the Commission, and foreign funds operating under exemptions, do not appear here. Form N-8F is available only to registered investment companies seeking a Section 8(f) order.
• Non-routine combinations. Mergers structured outside the Form N-8F fact patterns (for example, certain master-feeder reorganizations or combinations involving a non-registered entity) may proceed by general application rather than Form N-8F and are filed under different EDGAR codes.

How This Dataset Differs From Similar Datasets or Filings

Form 40-8F-M sits inside a tight cluster of Section 8(f) deregistration filings under the Investment Company Act of 1940. The most useful contrasts are with the other 40-8F variants that share the same statutory hook, with the registration-side counterpart filed by the surviving fund, and with structurally similar but legally distinct deregistration regimes.

Closest related filings

Form 40-8F-L (deregistration by liquidation). The nearest neighbor. Both are Section 8(f) applications filed by the disappearing fund and both seek a Commission order declaring the entity has ceased to be an investment company. The disposition mechanic is the dividing line: 40-8F-L describes a cash wind-down and pro rata distribution to shareholders; 40-8F-M describes an exchange of the merging fund's shares for shares of a surviving registered fund under a plan of reorganization. 40-8F-M filings typically cite an N-14, a tax-free reorganization structure, board fair-value determinations, and a shareholder vote on the merger agreement; 40-8F-L filings do not. Use 40-8F-L for cash wind-downs, 40-8F-M for fund-to-fund consolidations.

Form 40-8F-B (abandonment / no securities outstanding). Covers funds that registered but never made a public offering, or whose securities are no longer outstanding for reasons other than a merger or formal liquidation. Narratives are shorter, there is no surviving fund and no distribution waterfall, and volume is lower. Use 40-8F-B for fund shells that exited without ever operating; use 40-8F-M for operating funds that consolidated into another fund.

Form N-14 (registration of shares issued in a reorganization). The registration-side companion. N-14 is filed by the surviving (acquiring) fund to register the shares it will issue and to solicit shareholder approval; it carries the plan of reorganization, fee comparisons, pro forma financials, and tax opinion. 40-8F-M is filed by the disappearing (target) fund after consummation, for the narrow purpose of obtaining a deregistration order. Same transaction, opposite filers, opposite ends of the timeline: N-14 is forward-looking and solicitation-oriented; 40-8F-M is backward-looking and application-oriented. Both datasets are needed to reconstruct a merger end-to-end.

Form 15 / Form 15-15D (Exchange Act deregistration). Filed by operating-company issuers under the 1934 Act to suspend reporting obligations. Superficially analogous in that both terminate a federal reporting status, but the regimes are different in every operational respect: Form 15 is a short certified notice that takes effect by self-execution, the issuer remains in existence as a corporation, and no Commission order is required. 40-8F-M is a substantive application under the 1940 Act, the filer is typically already extinct as a separate fund, and an order is required. Filer populations do not overlap.

Form N-54C (BDC withdrawal of election). Filed by a business development company to withdraw its Section 54 election. Like 40-8F-M, it ends a 1940 Act status, but N-54C is a notice (no Commission order), applies only to BDCs, and contains no merger narrative. A BDC consolidating into another fund could file both, but they serve distinct legal functions.

Forms N-1A, N-2, and N-CEN (the merging fund's operating record). The registration statement (Form N-1A open-end, Form N-2 closed-end) and the annual census report (Form N-CEN, replacing N-SAR) document what the fund was while it operated: investment objective, adviser, board, fee structure, portfolio. 40-8F-M presupposes that record rather than duplicating it. Pull N-1A or N-2 for the fund's pre-merger structure, N-CEN for its final operating-year metrics, and 40-8F-M for the merger and its formal termination.

Boundary summary

Form 40-8F-M is narrowly scoped: it captures completed fund-into-fund mergers, filed by the disappearing fund, seeking a Section 8(f) deregistration order. It is not a registration filing (N-14), not a liquidation application (40-8F-L), not an abandonment application (40-8F-B), not Exchange Act deregistration (Form 15), not a BDC election withdrawal (N-54C), and not a periodic operating disclosure (N-1A, N-2, N-CEN). The adjacent datasets complement it when reconstructing a full merger record; none substitute for it. 40-8F-M is the only dataset that isolates registered investment companies that have formally terminated their 1940 Act status by reason of merger.

Who Uses This Dataset

The Form 40-8F-M Files Dataset is narrow but professionally dense, used by a defined set of professionals who each read different parts of the record: the merger narrative, board and shareholder approvals, surviving-fund identity, file numbers and CIKs, exhibits, and the 40-8F-M/A amendment trail.

Investment Company Act counsel

1940 Act lawyers use the dataset as a precedent library for Section 8(f) merger-driven deregistration applications. They study the application narrative, representations on shareholder approval and board findings, exhibit conventions, and surviving-fund continuity language to calibrate their own drafts. The 40-8F-M/A amendments show what staff comments and factual updates typically force a refile.

Fund secretaries and governance counsel

Fund-board secretaries reconcile the deregistration filing against their own minute books, written consents, and board packages. They focus on the board-approval recitations, shareholder-vote descriptions, and certification exhibits, and use the dataset to benchmark elapsed time between merger consummation, final NAV, and 40-8F-M submission for closing checklists.

Fund accounting, treasury, and CFO functions

Teams responsible for terminating an acquired fund use the dataset operationally. The expense disclosures, final-liability references, statements on liquidation of remaining positions, and confirmations that no shareholders remain drive the closing of books on a target fund and serve as templates for the financial representations the staff expects.

Fund administrators and transfer agents

Administrators and transfer agents coordinate post-merger operational deregistration: closing CUSIPs, transferring shareholder records to the surviving fund, terminating CIK and file-number activity, and reconciling final accounts. The surviving-fund identity, file numbers, and CIK references in the application drive master-file maintenance and support reconciliation of legacy accounts and escheatment inquiries.

M&A and corporate-development teams in asset management

Bankers and in-house corporate-development staff covering asset managers treat 40-8F-M filings as the dated, public end-state of fund-family rationalizations and post-acquisition product cleanup. They map target funds to surviving funds, quantify fund-count reduction across a sponsor lineup, and feed pitch materials on platform synergy and AUM migration.

Compliance officers at fund advisers

Compliance teams verify that historical deregistrations were filed and processed and confirm that no continuing 1940 Act obligations attach to a merged-out fund. They rely on file numbers, filing and amendment dates, and the exhibits evidencing board and shareholder action when maintaining legal-entity inventories and responding to internal audits of fund-lifecycle controls.

SEC registration and examination staff

Staff in fund registration, exemptive applications, and examinations use the dataset as a reference base for how Section 8(f) merger deregistrations have been framed historically. The application narrative, cessation representations, and 40-8F-M/A amendment patterns inform comment-letter drafting and consistency across applicants. Practice within the SEC Division of Investment Management shapes how these filings are reviewed.

Reference-data and fund-analytics engineers

Data engineers at financial-data vendors and fund-analytics providers ingest 40-8F-M and 40-8F-M/A filings to maintain fund lifecycle states (active, merged, surviving, deregistered). Surviving-fund identity, file numbers, CIKs, and effective dates drive entity resolution, successor linking, symbology termination, and downstream products such as fund family trees, share-class genealogy, and survivorship-corrected performance chains.

Academic researchers on fund mergers and survivorship

Finance and economics researchers studying fund mortality, survivorship bias, and product proliferation use the dataset as a dated population of merger-driven deregistrations. The merger narratives distinguish within-family from cross-family mergers, and shareholder-approval disclosures help separate target from surviving funds when constructing survivorship-bias-free fund panels.

Sell-side, buy-side, and credit analysts on listed asset managers

Analysts covering publicly traded asset-management firms track the cadence and direction of mergers across sponsors. Volume and timing of target-into-surviving moves feed views on product-line discipline, expense rationalization, and post-acquisition integration. Credit analysts use the same signal to assess product diversification and integration risk.

Retrieval and LLM engineers on fund-law corpora

Teams building retrieval systems and domain-tuned models for investment-company law use the dataset as a bounded, consistent corpus of Section 8(f) merger applications. It supports retrieval evaluation over deregistration narratives, exhibit handling, amendment tracking, and prototyping of question-answering on fund-lifecycle questions.

Across these audiences — fund counsel, board secretaries, accounting and operations teams, asset-management M&A staff, compliance officers, SEC staff, data vendors, academics, equity and credit analysts, and AI engineers — each user reads distinct parts of the same filings to answer one underlying question: when and how a registered fund ceased to exist by merger, and which fund survived it.

Specific Use Cases

The dataset supports a focused set of workflows around merger-driven fund deregistration. Each use case below ties to specific fields in metadata.json or numbered items in the Form N-8F body.

• Build a fund-genealogy graph of target-to-survivor mergers. Parse Item 26 to extract the surviving fund's name, 1940 Act file number, and the cited N-14 reference, then join against the deregistering filer's cik and entities[].fileNo from metadata.json. The result is a directed edge list (target CIK to surviving 811-number) suitable for fund family trees, successor linking, and survivorship-corrected performance chains.

• Audit board and shareholder approval timing across 40-8F-M and 40-8F-M/A pairs. Extract the Item 15(a) board-vote date and Item 15(b) shareholder-vote date, compare against filedAt, and re-extract the same fields from any matching /A accession. This surfaces typical lags between approval, consummation, and application, and flags amendments where approval recitations were corrected or supplemented.

• Track fund-family rationalization patterns by year and complex. Group records by filedAt year and by adviser/sponsor inferred from Item 11 (investment advisers, including sub-advisers). Counting target funds per complex per year quantifies post-acquisition product cleanup and within-family consolidation cadence, and supports pitch decks and analyst notes on platform synergy and fund-count reduction.

• Benchmark merger-expense itemizations. Parse Item 22 to pull legal, accounting, and "other" expense buckets (state deregistration filings, proxy solicitation, mailing, early termination fees) and the allocation between target, surviving fund, and adviser. The resulting series supports cost-of-merger comparables for fund counsel drafting subsequent applications and for treasury teams sizing closing budgets.

• Reconstruct end-to-end merger records by joining 40-8F-M to N-14. Use the Item 26 reference to the prior N-14 filing (file number, form type, and filing date) to link each deregistration application to the registration-side companion filed by the surviving fund. The combined view yields plan-of-reorganization, fee comparison, and pro forma data on the N-14 side and the post-consummation cessation representations on the 40-8F-M side.

• Maintain fund-lifecycle states for reference-data products. Ingest formType, accessionNo, filedAt, and entities[].cik/fileNo to flip a fund's state from active to merged-out as of the application date, and use Item 26's surviving-fund identifiers to write the successor pointer. The 40-8F-M/A trail keeps the lifecycle record current when applications are amended.

• Assemble a retrieval corpus for Section 8(f) merger-application QA. Use the stable Roman-numeral and Arabic-item anchors (Items 1, 15, 22, 24, 26 and the verification block) to chunk both HTM- and TXT-encoded application documents into question-scoped passages. The bounded, template-driven structure makes the dataset usable as a clean evaluation set for fund-law retrieval and domain-tuned LLM prototyping.

Dataset Access

Dataset Index JSON API: [https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-408fm-files.json](https://sec-api.io/datasets)

This endpoint returns the dataset's metadata and the full list of container files available for download. The response includes the dataset name, description, last update timestamp, earliest sample date, total record count, total size, covered form types (40-8F-M and 40-8F-M/A), container format (ZIP), and file types (TXT, JSON, HTML). It also provides the download URL for the entire dataset archive and an entry for each container with its size, record count, last updated timestamp, and direct download URL. Use this endpoint to monitor which containers were updated in the most recent refresh run and to selectively download only the changed containers on a daily basis. This endpoint does not require an API key.

Example response:

          1
          {
        

          2
            "datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-69b2-a213-3a9b7d621cfc",
        

          3
            "datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-408fm-files.zip",
        

          4
            "name": "Form 40-8F-M Files Dataset",
        

          5
            "updatedAt": "2026-04-15T12:12:03.546Z",
        

          6
            "earliestSampleDate": "1999-06-01",
        

          7
            "totalRecords": 716,
        

          8
            "totalSize": 3682114,
        

          9
            "formTypes": ["40-8F-M", "40-8F-M/A"],
        

          10
            "containerFormat": "ZIP",
        

          11
            "fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON", "HTML"],
        

          12
            "containers": [
        

          13
              {
        

          14
                "downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-408fm-files/2026/2026-04.zip",
        

          15
                "key": "2026/2026-04.zip",
        

          16
                "size": 48213,
        

          17
                "records": 3,
        

          18
                "updatedAt": "2026-04-15T12:12:03.546Z"
        

          19
              }
        

          20
            ]
        

          21
          }
        

Download Entire Dataset: [https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-408fm-files.zip](https://sec-api.io/datasets)?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads the complete dataset archive containing every Form 40-8F-M and Form 40-8F-M/A filing from June 1999 to present in a single ZIP file. This endpoint requires an API key.

Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-408fm-files/2026/2026-04.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads one individual monthly container file instead of the full archive, which is useful for incremental updates or for retrieving filings from a specific period. Container paths follow the YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip pattern as listed in the dataset index. This endpoint requires an API key.

Frequently Asked Questions

What form does this dataset cover?

The dataset covers EDGAR form types 40-8F-M (initial application for deregistration of a registered investment company by reason of merger) and 40-8F-M/A (amendment to a previously filed application). Although the EDGAR form code is 40-8F-M, the substantive paper form rendered inside the document is Form N-8F, "Application for Deregistration of Certain Registered Investment Companies."

What does one record in this dataset represent?

One record corresponds to a single EDGAR accession of form type 40-8F-M or 40-8F-M/A, materialized on disk as a per-accession folder named after the dash-stripped accession number. Each folder contains exactly one metadata.json plus one primary Form N-8F application document encoded as inline HTML or plain ASCII text wrapped in EDGAR's <DOCUMENT> SGML envelope.

Who is required to file Form 40-8F-M?

The filer is a registered investment company — typically an open-end mutual fund, closed-end fund, unit investment trust, or registrant trust whose sole or final series has been merged out — applying to the SEC for an order under Section 8(f) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 declaring it has ceased to be an investment company by reason of merger. The acquiring or surviving fund is named as a counterparty in the application but does not file in that capacity.

When is Form 40-8F-M filed?

The filing is event-driven, not periodic. It is submitted after the target fund's board approves the plan of reorganization, a Form N-14 is filed for the surviving fund, target shareholders approve, and the reorganization closes. There is no fixed statutory deadline keyed to the closing date, but applicants file promptly because the entity remains a registered investment company subject to the 1940 Act until the Section 8(f) order takes effect.

What time period does the dataset cover?

EDGAR coverage of this submission type runs from June 1, 1999 forward. Pre-EDGAR Section 8(f) merger applications exist only as paper records and are not part of this dataset.

How does Form 40-8F-M differ from Form 40-8F-L and Form N-14?

Form 40-8F-L is the liquidation variant of the same Section 8(f) application, filed when the disappearing fund winds up by liquidating its portfolio and distributing cash rather than combining with another registered fund. Form N-14 is the registration-side companion, filed by the surviving (acquiring) fund to register the shares it will issue in the reorganization and to solicit shareholder approval; 40-8F-M is filed by the disappearing target fund after consummation to obtain the deregistration order.

What file format is the dataset distributed in?

The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers organized as <year>/<year>-<month>.zip. Inside each container, individual records are per-accession folders containing one JSON metadata file plus one primary application document in either HTM or TXT encoding. The full set of file types found in the dataset is TXT, JSON, and HTML.