The Form N-14 Files Dataset is a complete archive of every Form N-14 and Form N-14/A registration statement submitted to EDGAR by registered investment companies and business development companies, covering the universe of fund-on-fund business combinations registered under the Securities Act of 1933. Each record is one EDGAR submission — an initial Form N-14 registering shares to be issued in a Rule 145 fund merger, exchange offer, or other business combination, or a Form N-14/A amendment to such a filing — identified by its 18-digit SEC accession number and packaged with its primary HTML registration statement, every textual exhibit, and a structured metadata.json manifest. The dataset covers EDGAR phase-in for investment-company filings from March 1994 to the present and is distributed as monthly ZIP containers organized by YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip. Filings are made by the acquiring registrant — the entity issuing securities as transaction consideration — across mutual funds, ETFs, closed-end funds, BDCs, UITs, and registered separate accounts. Together, Form N-14 and Form N-14/A constitute the authoritative public record of registered-fund and BDC business combinations under 17 CFR 239.23.
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The Form N-14 Files Dataset captures the full population of Form N-14 and Form N-14/A submissions accepted by EDGAR since March 1994. Form N-14 is the registration statement prescribed by 17 CFR 239.23 for use by registered investment companies and business development companies to register, under the Securities Act of 1933, securities issued in connection with business combination transactions. Covered transactions include statutory mergers and consolidations, exchange offers, transfers of substantially all assets, and other Rule 145 transactions. In practice the form is dominated by open-end fund reorganizations (one mutual fund or ETF series merging into another) and ETF conversions, with closed-end fund and BDC combinations appearing less frequently.
Form N-14 functions simultaneously as a registration statement (registering the new shares the acquiring fund will issue to the target fund's shareholders) and as a proxy/information statement (soliciting target-fund shareholder approval of the reorganization, where required). Form N-14/A is the amendment counterpart: it can be a pre-effective amendment responding to staff comments, a definitive amendment incorporating updated financial data, or a post-effective amendment. The dataset stores the initial Form N-14 and every Form N-14/A as separate accession-level records, so a single reorganization is typically represented by several records over its review cycle. Records are delivered as monthly ZIP containers (YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip), each holding all Form N-14 and Form N-14/A submissions accepted by EDGAR in that calendar month, with file types spanning HTML, TXT, JSON, and PDF.
A single record in the Form N-14 Files Dataset is one complete EDGAR submission of Form N-14 or Form N-14/A, identified by an 18-digit SEC accession number (for example, accession 0001445546-25-007216 is stored under the folder 000144554625007216). Each record corresponds to one filing event: either an initial registration statement on Form N-14 covering a proposed business combination involving a registered investment company or business development company, or an amendment on Form N-14/A to a previously filed registration statement.
The record unit is the accession folder, not the prospectus, the proxy statement, the fund series, or any individual exhibit. A single accession may describe multiple target and acquiring fund series, span dozens of share classes, and carry a long list of exhibits, but it remains one record. Accession folders are grouped into monthly ZIP containers (YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip), each holding all Form N-14 and Form N-14/A submissions accepted by EDGAR in that calendar month.
The internal organization of a Form N-14 filing follows the form's three-part structure prescribed by the SEC:
Financial-statement content typically includes the most recent audited annual financials of both target and acquiring funds (frequently incorporated by reference from each fund's most recent N-CSR), unaudited semi-annual financials where applicable, and pro forma combined financial statements when the funds differ materially and pro formas are required. Risk disclosures contrast the principal risks of the target and acquiring funds, calling out differences in strategy, leverage, derivatives use, concentration, and tax structure where material.
Inside its monthly ZIP, each accession folder contains one metadata.json manifest plus the textual filing artifacts that make up the EDGAR submission. Every textual document preserves the EDGAR SGML wrapper at its head: a header block beginning <DOCUMENT> and carrying <TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, <FILENAME>, <DESCRIPTION>, and <TEXT> lines before the HTML (or, in legacy filings, plain-text) payload. This wrapper mirrors the corresponding entry in metadata.json. For example, a primary registration statement opens with lines such as <TYPE>N-14, <SEQUENCE>1, <FILENAME>kngx_n14.htm, <DESCRIPTION>INITIAL REGISTRATION STATEMENT, then the HTML body of the prospectus/proxy. Exhibits follow the same wrapper, with <TYPE> set to the exhibit code (for example EX-99.14 paired with <DESCRIPTION>CONSENT OF INDEPENDENT REGISTERED PUBLIC ACCOUNTING FIRM).
The metadata.json manifest is the structured spine of the record. Its top-level fields describe the submission as a whole and enumerate every constituent document:
formType — "N-14" or "N-14/A".accessionNo — the canonical dashed accession number.description — the human-readable form description, e.g. "Form N-14 - Registration statement for open-end investment company (business combinations)", with the suffix "[Amend]" appended for N-14/A.filedAt — ISO-8601 timestamp with Eastern Time offset for the EDGAR acceptance time.linkToFilingDetails, linkToTxt, linkToHtml — URLs on sec.gov for the EDGAR filing-index page, the full SGML submission text bundle, and the primary document.documentFormatFiles — an ordered array of every document in the submission. Each entry carries sequence, size (bytes, as a string), documentUrl (absolute EDGAR URL), description, and type (the EDGAR exhibit code such as N-14, EX-99.4, EX-99.6(I), EX-99.11, EX-99.12, EX-99.14, EX-99.16, EX-99.17 (AS APPROP), or GRAPHIC).entities — an array describing the filer(s), each with cik, companyName (suffixed (Filer)), type, filmNo, fileNo (the 333- registration number assigned to the N-14 statement), irsNo, act (typically "33" for the Securities Act), stateOfIncorporation, and (where reported) fiscalYearEnd.seriesAndClassesContractsInformation — an array of fund series objects, each with a series ID (S000…), the series name, and a classesContracts array of share-class objects (each with classContract C000…, name, and optional ticker). Both target and acquiring series typically appear in the same record, so a single record can enumerate a dozen or more class-contracts across multiple target/acquiring pairs.A representative record illustrates the layout. Accession 0001445546-25-007216 (First Trust Series Fund, an N-14 covering a fund reorganization affecting the KNGTX share-class lineup) consists of a primary HTML registration statement of roughly 1.1 MB (kngx_n14.htm, type N-14, sequence 1), five exhibit HTML files (exhibit_1c.htm for EX-99.1, exhibit_12.htm for EX-99.12, exhibit_14.htm for EX-99.14, exhibit_16.htm for EX-99.16, exhibit_17.htm for EX-99.17 (AS APPROP)), and a metadata.json manifest. The manifest also catalogues the GRAPHIC items and the catch-all submission .txt bundle that exist on EDGAR but are not written to disk.
Primary submission document (Type N-14 or N-14/A). The full registration-statement HTML, typically the largest file in the record. Sizes range from a few hundred kilobytes for slim closed-end or single-class reorganizations up to roughly two megabytes for ETF-trust filings spanning multiple series. The primary document carries Part A and (usually) Part B in a single file: cover page, facing page, contents/cross-reference sheet, the letter to shareholders, the Q&A summary, the notice of special meeting, the combined prospectus/proxy describing the proposed reorganization, comparative fee tables, capitalization tables, comparative performance, comparative risk discussion, federal tax discussion, the form of Agreement and Plan of Reorganization (often re-attached as an appendix), and the SAI body. Pro forma combined financial statements, where required, are usually embedded in the primary document or in its SAI portion.
Exhibits filed under Part C. Form N-14 prescribes a numbered exhibit schedule under Item 16, and the EDGAR submission encodes each exhibit using EX-99.<n> codes that map to those item numbers. The exhibit set commonly observed includes:
EX-99.1 — Articles of incorporation / declaration of trust (or amendment thereto) of the registrant.EX-99.2 — By-laws.EX-99.3 — Voting trust agreement (rare).EX-99.4 — The Agreement and Plan of Reorganization (the central transactional document; sometimes broken into sub-lettered items EX-99.4(A), EX-99.4(B) when several reorganization agreements are executed in a single filing).EX-99.5 — Specimen security or related instrument.EX-99.6 — Investment advisory contracts (often sub-lettered EX-99.6(I), EX-99.6(VIII) and so on for the management agreement and each sub-advisory agreement; an ETF reorganization can carry many of these).EX-99.7 — Underwriting / distribution agreements.EX-99.8 — Bonus, profit-sharing, or pension plans.EX-99.9 — Custodian agreements.EX-99.10 — Rule 12b-1 plan.EX-99.11 — Opinion and consent of counsel as to legality of securities being registered.EX-99.12 — Tax opinion (the Section 368(a) opinion that the reorganization qualifies as tax-free).EX-99.13 — Other material contracts.EX-99.14 — Consent of the independent registered public accounting firm (the auditors of each fund whose financial statements are incorporated by reference).EX-99.15 — Omitted financial statements (rare).EX-99.16 — Powers of attorney.EX-99.17 — Additional exhibits, frequently encoded as EX-99.17 (AS APPROP), used for proxy cards, prospectuses incorporated by reference, and similar items.A smaller subset of filings uses a flatter EX-16.<n> numbering reflecting an alternative encoding of the same Item 16 schedule. Exhibit content is typically a mix of legal instruments (articles, by-laws, agreements), counsel/auditor letters (legality opinion, tax opinion, accountant consent), and ancillary materials (powers of attorney, proxy cards). Many exhibits incorporate by reference earlier filings rather than re-attach the document; the manifest still lists them with a description such as INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE.
Graphics referenced but not stored. EDGAR submissions routinely include GRAPHIC items — fund or sponsor logos, performance charts, proxy-card images — attached as .jpg, .gif, or similar binary files. These are enumerated in metadata.json with their documentUrl, but image binaries are not stored in the dataset's containers; only textual artifacts (HTML, JSON, and legacy plain-text) are written to disk. The original images remain retrievable from EDGAR via the URLs in the manifest.
Submission text bundle. EDGAR's full-submission .txt file (the SGML envelope concatenating every document in the submission) is catalogued in documentFormatFiles but is not extracted; the per-document HTML files in the folder, each carrying its own SGML wrapper, supersede that bundle.
The on-disk record includes the structured metadata.json manifest, the primary HTML registration statement, and every textual exhibit document associated with the accession. The SGML wrapper preceding the HTML body of each document is preserved verbatim, providing a per-document mini-manifest (<TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, <FILENAME>, <DESCRIPTION>) consistent with the corresponding entry in metadata.json. The series-and-class manifest captures the full set of fund series and share classes participating in the reorganization, together with their series IDs (S000…), class IDs (C000…), names, and tickers where assigned.
Image and other binary exhibits (GRAPHIC items: .jpg, .gif, occasionally other binary attachments) are intentionally excluded; they remain referenced in metadata.json and can be retrieved from EDGAR by URL. The catch-all SGML submission .txt bundle is likewise referenced in the manifest but not re-extracted, since the constituent documents are already present individually. Documents that the registrant chooses to incorporate by reference rather than attach — most often the funds' most recent annual and semi-annual shareholder reports on Form N-CSR, and earlier registration statements on Form N-1A or N-2 from which articles, by-laws, or advisory contracts are pulled forward — are not part of the N-14 record itself; they exist as separate filings under separate accession numbers and must be joined externally if needed.
The shell of Form N-14 has remained relatively stable since the form's modern codification at 17 CFR 239.23, but several substantive disclosure layers have been added or amended across the dataset's window since March 1994. The fee and expense table format has been updated multiple times as Rule 6-07 of Regulation S-X and the related Item disclosures evolved, including the introduction of acquired-fund-fees-and-expenses (AFFE) line items in the 2000s and refinements to expense-example presentation. Pro forma financial-statement requirements have been clarified through SEC staff guidance, narrowing the circumstances in which pro formas must be presented for combinations of substantially similar funds. The 2009 summary-prospectus framework adopted for Form N-1A spilled into N-14 practice through the increasing prevalence of summary-style Q&A sections at the front of the prospectus/proxy. Tailored Shareholder Reports rules adopted in 2022 affect the form of the financial statements incorporated by reference, while Form N-14 itself retains its prospectus / SAI / Part-C three-part structure. Risk-disclosure norms have shifted with Rule 18f-4 (derivatives), Rule 22e-4 (liquidity), and the 2020 fund-of-funds rule (Rule 12d1-4), each producing new comparative-risk language in N-14 prospectus/proxy statements addressing those exposures. The exhibit list under Item 16 has been amended over time, and EDGAR's encoding of exhibits has migrated from older locally-numbered conventions (EX-1, EX-2, …) toward the EX-99.<n> scheme that dominates modern filings, with (AS APPROP) and sub-lettered codes used to disambiguate multiple instances of the same item.
The Form N-14/A amendment variant has been part of the dataset throughout: a typical reorganization produces an initial N-14, one or more pre-effective N-14/A amendments responsive to staff comments, and occasionally a definitive N-14/A. Because each accession is its own record, the dataset captures the full amendment lineage rather than a collapsed final view.
EDGAR began accepting Form N-14 filings in early 1994, and the dataset's earliest records sit in the original ASCII/SGML era: the primary submission and exhibits were filed as plain-text documents wrapped in the same <DOCUMENT>/<TEXT> SGML envelope still visible today, with tabular content rendered as fixed-width ASCII tables. Through the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, registrants migrated to HTML as EDGAR began accepting and ultimately preferring HTML submissions, allowing typeset prospectus-style presentation, embedded styling, and inline graphics. By the modern era, virtually all Form N-14 filings are HTML primary documents and HTML exhibits, with bitmap content carried as referenced GRAPHIC items rather than ASCII art. Throughout these transitions the SGML document wrapper at the head of each file has remained constant, which is why every textual document in the dataset — old or new — begins with the same five header lines before its <HTML> or plain-text payload.
Several record-level nuances matter for downstream extraction:
N-14/A accession can be substantively complete (carrying its own primary document and full exhibit set) or a "bare" amendment carrying only a revised primary document and the exhibits that changed. The lineage between an initial N-14 and its amendments is conveyed through the shared fileNo (the 333-… registration number in entities), not through the accession number.seriesAndClassesContractsInformation as the authoritative inventory of the reorganization's participants for that filing.<TYPE> line at the head of each file and from the type field in metadata.json, not from the filename. Most filings use EX-99.<n> codes; a smaller share use a flatter EX-16.<n> scheme for the same Item 16 exhibits; sub-lettered variants (EX-99.4(A), EX-99.6(VIII)) appear when multiple instruments of the same exhibit type are filed.metadata.json but must be fetched from EDGAR via documentUrl if needed.metadata.json.description fields are free-form. They can be informative (INITIAL REGISTRATION STATEMENT, CONSENT OF INDEPENDENT REGISTERED PUBLIC ACCOUNTING FIRM, FORM OF TAX OPINION) but vary across filers and are sometimes absent on GRAPHIC items; classification should rely primarily on the type code.Each record in the Form N-14 Files Dataset is filed by the acquiring registrant in a fund-level business combination — the entity issuing the securities used as transaction consideration. The filer is not the target fund, the target's shareholders, the investment adviser, or the board, even though those parties structure and approve the deal. The same acquiring registrant signs the initial Form N-14 and any subsequent Form N-14/A amendments.
The document typically describes two funds: the acquiring fund (issuing new shares) and the target fund (whose assets and liabilities are absorbed). For Securities Act purposes, only the issuer of the registered shares — the surviving or acquiring entity — is the legal filer.
Form N-14 is restricted to investment-company-regime issuers under 17 CFR 239.23:
Operating companies, foreign private issuers, and ordinary Exchange Act reporting issuers do not file Form N-14; they use Form S-4 (or F-4) for the same Rule 145 purpose. The dividing line is 1940 Act registration status or BDC election.
Form N-14 is transaction-driven and event-triggered, not periodic. A record exists because a specific Rule 145 fund combination required Securities Act registration. Common triggers:
The operational trigger is board approval of the plan of reorganization (with any required Rule 17a-8 findings). The N-14 must then be filed before any offering material is delivered to target shareholders, because Section 5(c) of the Securities Act prohibits offers before registration.
A single transaction typically produces one Form N-14 plus a chain of Form N-14/A amendments under related accession numbers.
Form N-14/A amendments are filed for:
Form N-14 sits at the intersection of three regimes:
When a target shareholder vote is required, the same Form N-14 doubles as the proxy statement, satisfying Exchange Act Section 14(a) and Schedule 14A requirements for the target's solicitation. When no vote is required, the document still serves as the registration statement and prospectus for the new shares, with reduced proxy content replaced by an information statement or notice.
The dataset begins in March 1994, reflecting EDGAR phase-in for investment company filings. Earlier paper Form N-14 filings (the form was adopted in 1985) are not included.
Form N-14 sits at the intersection of three filing families: Securities Act registration statements, fund proxy/information statements, and transaction-disclosure documents. It overlaps with each but substitutes for none. The closest comparison targets are operating-company merger registrations, ordinary fund registrations, fund proxies, and periodic fund reporting.
S-4 (domestic operating companies) and F-4 (foreign private issuers) are the operating-company analogues of N-14. All three exist because Rule 145 treats certain mergers, consolidations, reclassifications, and asset transfers as Securities Act sales when securities are issued to target holders. Each combines a transaction prospectus with proxy-style disclosure to voting securityholders.
The divide is categorical. S-4 and F-4 follow Regulation S-K and Article 11 of Regulation S-X: business descriptions, MD&A, executive compensation, pro forma financials. N-14 follows the investment-company regime: fee and expense tables, fund capitalization tables, portfolio-level financials, investment objective and policy comparisons, and RIC tax consequences. The registrant universes do not overlap and the disclosure content is not interchangeable.
These are the standing registration forms for fund offerings:
The filer population is the same as N-14, and many disclosure components (fee tables, investment objectives, risk factors, SAI content) appear on both sides. The distinction is purpose: N-1A through N-6 register a continuous offering of fund shares to the public; N-14 registers a one-time issuance of acquirer-fund shares exchanged for target-fund shares in a Rule 145 transaction. Fund-merger activity appears only on N-14; new-fund launches and ongoing offerings appear only on the N-series.
N-14 8C is used by closed-end funds that have made a Section 8(c) election, primarily for offerings (such as certain rights offerings) that require N-14-style registration but are not Rule 145 business combinations. It shares document architecture with N-14 but covers a different transaction type. This dataset is restricted to form types "N-14" and "N-14/A" and excludes N-14 8C; treat it as an adjacent but separate population.
Fund mergers that issue new acquirer shares fold the proxy disclosure into the N-14 itself, which functions as both a Section 5 prospectus and a Section 14(a) proxy/information statement. DEF 14A and PRE 14A are filed when the matter voted on does not require Securities Act registration — trustee elections, new advisory agreements, changes to fundamental policies, or in-kind reorganizations outside Rule 145.
The two are complements: relying only on DEF 14A misses share-issuing combinations; relying only on N-14 misses governance and policy votes.
Many affiliated fund-to-fund mergers proceed under Rule 17a-8 of the Investment Company Act, which requires specific board findings but produces no SEC filing. The N-14 that registers shares for the same transaction is therefore the only public, machine-discoverable trace of many affiliated-fund mergers.
After an N-14 becomes effective and the merger closes, the surviving fund files Form 497 supplements to update its operative prospectus and SAI under its existing N-1A or N-2 registration. Form 497 is post-effectiveness disclosure tied to a continuous offering; it does not register new securities. The relationship is sequential — N-14 registers the transaction, 497 reflects its consummation — and full coverage of a merger and its aftermath generally requires both.
N-CSR (certified shareholder reports), N-PORT (monthly portfolio holdings) and N-CEN (annual fund census) share registrants with N-14 but cover unrelated content: financial statements and shareholder letters, structured holdings and risk metrics, and structured census data, respectively. None is event-driven by combinations and none registers securities. Useful for characterizing the funds before and after a merger; not a source of merger terms.
N-14/A covers pre-effective and post-effective amendments to a specific N-14 — incorporating staff comments, updating financials, finalizing fee tables. It resembles the S-4/A cycle and should not be confused with Rule 485 post-effective amendments to N-1A or N-2 shelves (485APOS, 485BPOS), which update ongoing fund offerings and recur throughout a fund's life. N-14/A is bounded and event-tied; 485-series amendments are continuous.
N-14 is the only SEC filing that simultaneously (1) registers securities under the 1933 Act for a Rule 145 transaction, (2) serves as the proxy/information statement to voting fund shareholders, (3) is restricted to investment-company and BDC filers, and (4) is triggered by a business combination rather than an ongoing offering or reporting cycle. S-4 and F-4 share the registration-plus-proxy structure but cover operating companies. N-1A through N-6 share the filer universe but cover ordinary offerings. DEF 14A shares the proxy function but does not register securities. Rule 17a-8 covers similar transactions but produces no filing. Form 497, N-CSR, N-PORT, and N-CEN involve the same registrants but address before-and-after states.
N-14 and N-14/A together constitute the authoritative public record of registered-fund and BDC business combinations from March 1994 forward. For research framed around fund mergers, reorganizations, or Rule 145 fund transactions, no adjacent dataset substitutes; for context on the funds or the surviving entity, the periodic-reporting and continuous-offering datasets are the natural complements.
Each Form N-14 filing carries the plan of reorganization, board rationale, fee comparisons, tax opinion, and combined prospectus/proxy. The professional users below each read a different slice of that record.
Sector bankers and in-house corp-dev teams track fund-family consolidation. They pull the rationale section, exchange structure (NAV-for-NAV vs. cash-and-shares), pre/post AUM, and pro forma fee tables, plus the plan of reorganization exhibit for precedent language on break-up fees, expense allocation, and closing conditions. Outputs: deal logs, league tables of acquisitive sponsors, and precedent decks for board pitches.
Fund counsel use the corpus as a drafting and benchmarking library: plans of reorganization, board-process disclosures, Section 15(f) representations, Exhibit 8 tax opinions, Exhibit 12 legality opinions, accountant consents, and proxy Q&A. They pull comparables by complex size and vehicle type (open-end, ETF, closed-end, BDC) to benchmark risk-factor language on differing objectives, Section 381/382 capital-loss limitations, and surviving fee waivers. The N-14 vs. N-14/A diff supports staff-comment monitoring.
Analysts holding target funds need early notice when a position is being merged away. They scan new filings for target/acquirer names, special-meeting and closing dates, the fee and expense comparison, and the surviving fund's strategy. Model-portfolio and FoF teams use the filings to schedule rebalancing before the effective date and avoid forced in-kind exchanges into vehicles that fail their screens. Workflow: a CIK-keyed watchlist over continuously refreshed filings.
Broker-dealer ops, retirement-platform sponsors, and clearing-firm fund-ops teams prepare for the mechanics: CUSIP retirements, ticker changes, share-class mapping, conversion ratios, and purchase cut-off dates. They read the reorganization-information section and the conversion mechanics in the plan exhibit. Output: change-control tickets that update security masters, prospectus-delivery rules, breakpoint schedules, and 22c-2 redemption-fee logic before the effective date.
Researchers studying fund mortality and survivorship bias use the archive as a near-complete record of merger-driven disappearances. They link target CIKs and series IDs to performance histories, then extract the stated rationale (underperformance, scale, overlap, rationalization) and pre-merger fees. Quant teams treat family-level reorganization activity as a signal for expense-ratio change and strategy drift, supporting event-time studies around announcement and effective dates.
Examiners benchmark disclosure practice across complexes: Section 15(f) wording, board evaluation, tax and capital-loss-carryforward explanations, and pro forma fee-table construction. The N-14/A amendment trail is the highest-value piece, since redlines reveal which disclosures staff pushed registrants to add.
Vendors that maintain fund identifier crosswalks, lineage graphs, and survivorship-bias-free performance series ingest N-14 filings to mark when a fund ceased as an independent series and which survivor inherits its track record under predecessor-fund guidance. They extract acquirer/target CIKs, series and class IDs, effective dates from N-14/A and 497 supplements, and the fee-table mapping to feed downstream ratings, screeners, and benchmarks.
Fee and expense consultants advising independent trustees use the dataset as a precedent library for advisory-fee schedules, contractual expense caps, 12b-1 plans, and total-expense ratios across comparable reorganizations. The pro forma expense table and the treatment of surviving waivers feed directly into board books and into negotiating cap durations on new advisory contracts.
Teams building retrieval systems for fund counsel, board-support workflows, or investor summarizers use the corpus as training and eval data for plan-of-reorganization language, merger Q&A, and 1940 Act disclosure conventions. The mix of HTML prospectus text, exhibit PDFs, and JSON metadata supports indexing keyed to accession, exhibit type, and fund identifier.
The dataset serves a narrow set of users organized around one primitive: the registered fund merger. Bankers treat it as a deal record, lawyers as a precedent library, analysts and platforms as an operational early-warning feed, regulators as a disclosure benchmark, academics and quants as a survivorship-bias source, and vendors as the authority on fund lineage.
The Form N-14 record set supports a small number of high-value workflows organized around fund-merger mechanics, precedent disclosure, and fund-lineage tracking. The use cases below tie each workflow to specific fields, exhibits, or sections of the record.
Data vendors and quant researchers join seriesAndClassesContractsInformation across N-14 records to map each disappearing target series (S000…) and class (C000…) to its acquiring survivor. Pairing this with the 333- fileNo to chain the initial N-14 to its N-14/A amendments, plus the closing/effective date pulled from the prospectus/proxy and any subsequent 497 supplement, produces a survivorship-bias-free identifier crosswalk feeding ratings histories and predecessor-fund performance carryover. Output: a target-to-acquirer table at the series and class-contract level, with effective dates and ticker retirements.
Fund counsel pull EX-99.4 (Agreement and Plan of Reorganization, including sub-lettered EX-99.4(A)/(B) variants) across comparables to benchmark expense-allocation clauses, closing conditions, termination rights, and Section 15(f) representations and 75%/no-unfair-burden covenants. Filtered by complex size, vehicle type (open-end, ETF, closed-end, BDC), and affiliated vs. unaffiliated transaction, the corpus produces a clause bank used directly in drafting new reorganization agreements and in negotiating sponsor-side reps with acquirer counsel.
Tax counsel use EX-99.12 (the Section 368(a) tax opinion) together with the federal tax-consequences section of Part A to benchmark how peers treat IRC Section 381/382/383 capital-loss carryforward limitations, holding-period tacking, and built-in-gain disclosures when target and acquirer differ in size or tax attributes. Output: a redline-ready opinion template and a comparison memo on representations and assumed facts across recent reorganizations of similar relative size.
Fee consultants and independent-trustee counsel extract the comparative fee and expense tables (current vs. pro forma combined annual operating expenses by share class, including AFFE lines and expense-example dollar amounts) and the treatment of surviving contractual expense caps and 12b-1 plans. Combined with the advisory-contract exhibits (EX-99.6, often sub-lettered for sub-advisers) and EX-99.10 12b-1 plans, this feeds 15(c) board books with peer-set evidence on cap durations, breakpoint structures, and waiver recapture provisions for the surviving fund.
Platform fund-ops teams ingest new N-14 and N-14/A accessions on a CIK-keyed watchlist and parse the reorganization-mechanics section plus EX-99.4 for conversion ratios, NAV-for-NAV exchange structure, special-meeting and closing dates, and purchase/redemption cut-offs. Output: change-control tickets that retire CUSIPs and tickers in security masters, remap share classes on retirement and brokerage platforms, update prospectus-delivery rules, and reconfigure 22c-2 redemption-fee logic before the effective date.
Disclosure-review staff and 1940 Act counsel diff the primary registration document and exhibit set between an initial N-14 and each subsequent N-14/A under the same fileNo. Recurring additions — expanded capital-loss-carryforward narrative, added principal-risk paragraphs for derivatives or liquidity, refined pro forma capitalization tables, supplemented Section 15(f) language — surface as patterns of staff comment, producing an internal checklist of likely review points before a new filing is submitted.
Researchers treat the dataset as the near-complete public record of registered-fund and BDC business combinations since March 1994. Linking target CIKs and S000 series IDs to N-CSR performance histories and N-PORT holdings, and extracting the board's stated rationale (underperformance, subscale AUM, strategy overlap, rationalization) from Part A, supports event-time studies of pre-merger flows, expense-ratio changes, and strategy drift around the announcement and effective dates.
Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n14-files.json
This endpoint returns the dataset index as JSON, including dataset-level metadata (name, description, last updated timestamp, earliest sample date, total records, total size, form types covered, container format, and file types) along with the full dataset download URL and a list of every individual container file. Each container entry includes its key, size, record count, last updated timestamp, and direct download URL. This endpoint does not require an API key.
The index is useful for monitoring which containers were updated in the most recent refresh run, so you can selectively download only the containers that changed on a given day instead of pulling the entire archive.
Example response:
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{
2
"datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-6941-bb1f-392083590bcc",
3
"datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n14-files.zip",
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"name": "Form N-14 Files Dataset",
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"updatedAt": "2026-05-08T02:52:53.939Z",
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"earliestSampleDate": "1994-03-01",
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"totalRecords": 39612,
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"totalSize": 1622919274,
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"formTypes": ["N-14", "N-14/A"],
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"containerFormat": "ZIP",
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"fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON", "HTML", "PDF"],
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"containers": [
13
{
14
"downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n14-files/2026/2026-05.zip",
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"key": "2026/2026-05.zip",
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"size": 13818783,
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"records": 154,
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"updatedAt": "2026-05-08T02:52:53.939Z"
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}
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]
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}
Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n14-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads the complete Form N-14 Files Dataset as a single ZIP archive covering all N-14 and N-14/A filings from March 1994 to the present. This endpoint requires an API key passed via the token query parameter.
Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n14-files/2026/2026-05.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads one individual monthly container ZIP file instead of the entire dataset, which is the recommended approach for incremental updates. Container paths follow the YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip pattern listed in the dataset index. This endpoint requires an API key.
The dataset covers form types N-14 and N-14/A — the initial Form N-14 registration statement prescribed by 17 CFR 239.23 and its pre-effective, definitive, and post-effective amendments. It does not include Form N-14 8C (the closed-end Section 8(c) variant), which covers a different transaction type.
A single record is one complete EDGAR submission — either an initial Form N-14 or a Form N-14/A amendment — identified by its 18-digit SEC accession number and stored as an accession folder containing a metadata.json manifest, the primary HTML registration statement, and every textual exhibit document. The record unit is the accession folder, not a fund series, a share class, or a single exhibit, even though one accession can describe multiple target/acquiring series and dozens of share classes.
Form N-14 is filed by the acquiring registrant — the issuer of the new shares used as transaction consideration — in a fund-level Rule 145 business combination. Eligible filers are open-end management investment companies (mutual funds, ETFs), closed-end management investment companies, unit investment trusts (in rare Rule 145 reorganizations), business development companies, and registered insurance product separate accounts. Operating-company issuers use Form S-4 or F-4 instead.
The dataset begins on March 1, 1994, reflecting EDGAR phase-in for investment-company filings, and continues to the present with monthly refreshes. Earlier paper Form N-14 filings (the form was adopted in 1985) are not included.
The dataset is delivered as monthly ZIP containers organized under a YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip path, each holding all Form N-14 and Form N-14/A submissions accepted by EDGAR in that calendar month. On-disk file types include HTML (primary documents and most modern exhibits), TXT (legacy plain-text filings and SGML wrappers), JSON (the per-record metadata.json manifest), and PDF.
Form S-4 (and F-4) registers Rule 145 business combinations for operating companies under Regulation S-K disclosure, while Form N-14 registers the same class of transactions for investment companies and BDCs under the 1940 Act regime — fee tables, capitalization tables, and RIC tax consequences instead of MD&A and executive compensation. DEF 14A and PRE 14A are proxy-only filings used when no Securities Act registration is required (trustee elections, advisory-contract votes); Form N-14 is used precisely when a Rule 145 share issuance is bundled with the shareholder solicitation.
No. GRAPHIC items — fund logos, performance charts, proxy-card images attached as .jpg or .gif — are intentionally excluded from the on-disk record. They remain enumerated in metadata.json with their documentUrl and can be retrieved from EDGAR by URL when needed; only textual artifacts (HTML, JSON, and legacy plain-text) are written to the dataset's containers.