Form N-8F ORDR Files Dataset

The Form N-8F ORDR Files Dataset assembles the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's deregistration orders for registered investment companies, as disseminated on EDGAR under form type N-8F ORDR. Each record is a single accession-numbered EDGAR submission carrying one Commission order issued under Section 8(f) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 — the order that finds an applicant fund has ceased to be an investment company and grants the requested deregistration. Because the SEC issues the document, every record is filed under the SEC's surrogate filer CIK (9999999997) rather than under the deregistering fund's own CIK; the deregistering fund is identified inside metadata.json by its CIK, company name, and 811-series Investment Company Act file number. Coverage runs from June 2009 — the operational rollout of EDGAR-based ORDR submissions — to the present, and the dataset is delivered as monthly ZIP containers, each accession appearing as its own folder containing a metadata.json descriptor and a PDF order document.

Dataset APIs

Dataset Files

What This Dataset Contains

The dataset captures the terminal legal act in the Section 8(f) lifecycle: the Commission's order declaring that a previously registered investment company has ceased to be an investment company within the meaning of the 1940 Act. It does not contain the underlying Form N-8F application filed by the fund, nor the procedural N-8F NTC notice that the Commission publishes between application and order. The substantive payload of every record is a short formal SEC release — typically a few pages of PDF — bundled with a structured JSON descriptor that exposes EDGAR's bibliographic facts about the filing.

The dataset covers the entire population of N-8F ORDR submissions on EDGAR from June 2009 forward. The 2009 boundary reflects when discrete EDGAR submissions under form type N-8F ORDR began; pre-2009 Section 8(f) orders existed but were disseminated through Commission release channels rather than as structured EDGAR submissions. Subjects span the full set of registered investment company structures: open-end management companies (mutual funds), closed-end management companies, unit investment trusts (UITs) including insurance separate accounts organized as UITs, face-amount certificate companies, and management-IC separate accounts.

The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers. Inside each container, accessions appear as per-accession folders, and each folder holds two files: metadata.json and the order PDF (filename1.pdf). The order is delivered as a PDF (typically PDF-1.6) exactly as submitted to EDGAR; no OCR layer, text extraction, or structural parsing is added by the dataset.

Content Structure of a Single Record

What one record represents

One record in the Form N-8F ORDR Files Dataset is a single accession-numbered EDGAR submission that carries one Commission order deregistering a registered investment company under Section 8(f) of the Investment Company Act of 1940. The record is materialised as a per-accession folder whose name is the 18-digit, dash-stripped EDGAR accession number. That folder bundles two things: a structured metadata.json describing the filing, and the order document itself, distributed by EDGAR as a PDF. Each record therefore captures, in one compact unit, both the bibliographic facts about the filing (filer identity, 811 file number, filing timestamp, item codes, EDGAR URLs) and the legal instrument that effects the deregistration.

The underlying SEC document

A Form N-8F ORDR submission on EDGAR is not a registrant-prepared form. The "ORDR" suffix marks it as a Commission order issued in response to a previously filed Form N-8F application. The substantive document is an SEC release: a formal order finding that an applicant — typically a registered investment company that has liquidated, merged into another registered fund, transferred its assets to an exempt entity, or otherwise ceased operating as an investment company — has ceased to be an investment company within the meaning of the 1940 Act, and granting the requested deregistration.

A typical order text contains, in order:

• A caption identifying the applicant and the 811-series Investment Company Act file number, with a release number and date.
• A recital block summarising the underlying Form N-8F application and the basis pleaded for relief (liquidation, merger, asset transfer, or cessation of operations).
• A procedural recital stating that notice of the application was published, an opportunity for hearing was provided, and no request for hearing was received.
• A legal finding under Section 8(f) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 that the applicant has ceased to be an investment company.
• An operative ordering paragraph declaring deregistration.
• A signature block executed by the Division of Investment Management under delegated authority, or by the Commission directly, depending on the era and the form of delegation.

Because the SEC itself issues this document, the EDGAR submission is filed under the SEC's surrogate filer CIK rather than under the deregistering company's CIK.

Container and per-accession layout

The dataset is delivered as monthly ZIP containers. Decompressing one container yields a single month-named root folder (for example 2025-08/). Inside that folder, each accession appears as its own sub-directory whose name is the 18-digit numeric accession number with dashes removed (for example 999999999725003285). Every folder name begins with the prefix 9999999997 — the EDGAR convention for filings made under the SEC's own surrogate CIK. The deregistering company's CIK is not part of the folder name; it appears inside metadata.json and inside the archive path embedded in linkToFilingDetails.

Inside each accession folder, two artifacts appear:

• metadata.json — a small structured JSON file (on the order of 1.5 KB) describing the filing as EDGAR sees it.
• filename1.pdf — the SEC's order document. The basename is opaque and not derived from the company; it is the literal filename used by EDGAR for the submitted document. PDFs are typically PDF-1.6 and run on the order of 100–120 KB.

For Form N-8F ORDR, the original EDGAR submission carries only this single order PDF as substantive content. The aggregated <accession>.txt complete-submission wrapper that EDGAR exposes for every filing is referenced from metadata.json (linkToTxt) but is not redistributed inside the container. The <accession>-index.htm filing-index page is likewise referenced (linkToHtml) but not redistributed. Image files from the original submission are excluded by the dataset's collection rules; ORDR submissions do not carry XBRL or other structured-data instances, so none appear.

metadata.json — fields and shape

metadata.json is a flat JSON object with a stable set of top-level keys. The fields fall into three groups: filing-level identifiers and links, content descriptors, and the nested documentFormatFiles[] and entities[] arrays.

Filing-level identifiers and timing

• formType — always the string "N-8F ORDR".
• accessionNo — the dashed accession (for example "9999999997-25-003285"); the on-disk folder name is the same number with dashes stripped.
• filedAt — ISO-8601 timestamp with US Eastern offset (for example "2025-08-05T12:13:03-04:00"), recording when EDGAR ingested the order.
• id — a 32-character lowercase hexadecimal internal record identifier (an MD5-shaped string).

Links into EDGAR

• linkToFilingDetails — direct URL to the order PDF on www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/<companyCIK>/<accessionDigits>/filename1.pdf. The path segment after /data/ exposes the deregistering company's CIK even though the accession itself is filed under the SEC's surrogate CIK.
• linkToTxt — URL to EDGAR's complete-submission text wrapper <accession>.txt.
• linkToHtml — URL to the EDGAR filing-index page <accession>-index.htm.
• linkToXbrl — empty string for this dataset.

Content descriptors

• description — a free-text string of the form "Form N-8F ORDR - N-8F Order - Item YYYYMMDD Item YYYYMMDD", embedding the order date and a second related date (typically the underlying notice or application date).
• items — an array of EDGAR Item code strings shaped like "Item 20250805: ", with the value after the colon left blank. The encoded dates mirror those in description and pin the order to specific procedural milestones.
• seriesAndClassesContractsInformation — present but empty for ORDR records (series/class structure is reported on the underlying registrant's own filings, not on the deregistration order).
• dataFiles — present but empty (no structured data files accompany an ORDR).

documentFormatFiles[]

This array enumerates the files that EDGAR's submission index lists for the accession. For an N-8F ORDR record there are typically two entries: the order PDF and the complete-submission text wrapper.

• The order-PDF element carries sequence: "1", type: "N-8F ORDR", size as a numeric string (for example "117545") that matches the on-disk filename1.pdf byte-for-byte, and documentUrl pointing into the EDGAR archive.
• The wrapper element carries sequence: " " and type: " " (single-space strings rather than null or empty, propagated verbatim from EDGAR), description: "Complete submission text file", and a documentUrl ending in <accession>.txt.

All numeric-looking values in this array, including size, are stored as JSON strings.

entities[]

entities[] describes the parties EDGAR associates with the filing. For an N-8F ORDR record the only entity that typically appears is the deregistering investment company itself, with the trailing (Filer) role suffix retained from EDGAR (for example "NB Private Markets Fund III (TI) LLC (Filer)"). Per-entity fields:

• cik — the CIK of the deregistering investment company (a numeric string; not the surrogate 9999999997 from the accession). This is the canonical join key back to other EDGAR filings by the same fund.
• fileNo — the 811-series Investment Company Act file number (for example "811-22814"). This is the identifier the order operates on; deregistration removes this 811 file from active status.
• act — the string "40", denoting the Investment Company Act of 1940, the statute under which Section 8(f) relief is granted.
• companyName — full registrant name with the (Filer) suffix.
• stateOfIncorporation — two-letter state or jurisdiction code (commonly DE, MA, MD, or NY for fund vehicles).
• fiscalYearEnd — four-character MMDD string with leading zeros preserved (for example "0331").
• irsNo — IRS employer identification number as a string (leading zeros preserved).
• filmNo — EDGAR film number for the submission, as a string.
• type — the form type the entity is associated with on this submission, "N-8F ORDR".

Co-applicants, sponsors, and successor entities are not generally enumerated as separate entities[] rows on the order itself.

The order PDF

The substantive content of every record is the order PDF stored as filename1.pdf. The basename is fixed and opaque, so the file cannot be identified outside its accession folder without consulting metadata.json. The PDFs are produced as PDF-1.6 documents and are typically a few pages of formal release text, following the standard SEC order template described above (caption, recitals, Section 8(f) finding, ordering paragraph, signature). The dataset stores the PDF as delivered by EDGAR; no OCR layer, text extraction, or structural parsing is added.

What is included vs. excluded

Included in each record:

• metadata.json, the filing descriptor.
• The order PDF (filename1.pdf) as submitted to EDGAR.
• Any other documents that were part of the original EDGAR submission, except image files. In practice, ORDR submissions are single-document submissions, so the order PDF is the entirety of the substantive payload.

Excluded or not redistributed:

• Image files from the original submission (excluded by dataset rule).
• The aggregated <accession>.txt complete-submission wrapper (referenced via linkToTxt).
• The EDGAR <accession>-index.htm filing-index page (referenced via linkToHtml).
• The underlying Form N-8F application. The application is a separate EDGAR filing made by the company under its own CIK with its own accession number; the order's recitals reference it but the application document is not co-located with the ORDR record.

The 9999999997 surrogate-CIK convention

A defining feature of N-8F ORDR records is that they are filed under the EDGAR surrogate CIK 9999999997, which the SEC uses for filings made by Commission staff (orders, notices, and other Commission-issued documents) rather than by an outside registrant. The convention is visible in three places within a record: the accession-number prefix (9999999997-YY-NNNNNN, rendered dash-stripped as the folder name), the accessionNo field in metadata.json, and the EDGAR archive paths in linkToTxt and linkToHtml. The deregistering fund's own CIK does not appear in the accession; it is carried in entities[].cik and as the numeric segment after /edgar/data/ in linkToFilingDetails and in the per-document documentUrl values. Joining ORDR records back to the rest of an issuer's filing history therefore requires reading entities[].cik (or parsing the EDGAR archive URL), not the accession number.

Coverage period and structural stability

The dataset spans EDGAR submissions from June 2009 to the present. The 2009 starting boundary reflects the operational rollout of EDGAR-based ORDR submissions for N-8F deregistrations; earlier deregistration orders were generally issued and disseminated outside the structured EDGAR submission flow. From 2009 onward the record anatomy has been substantively stable: each record consists of one PDF order plus a metadata.json descriptor, filed under the SEC's surrogate CIK, with the deregistering company's identifying information carried in entities[] and the 811 file number carried in entities[].fileNo. The order has consistently been delivered as a PDF over the entire coverage window — there is no historical migration through ASCII or HTML body formats — and the Item YYYYMMDD dating convention used in items[] and embedded in description is stable across the period.

Interpretation and extraction notes

• Dash treatment. The accession folder name and metadata.json.accessionNo differ in dash treatment (999999999725003285 on disk versus "9999999997-25-003285" in JSON). Consumers normalising identifiers must strip or insert the dashes accordingly.
• String-typed numerics. All numeric-looking metadata values (size, cik, irsNo, filmNo, fileNo digits, fiscalYearEnd) are JSON strings, which preserves leading zeros (notably fiscalYearEnd like "0331").
• Whitespace placeholders. Whitespace-only sequence and type values appear on the wrapper .txt row in documentFormatFiles[], propagated verbatim from EDGAR rather than coerced to null or empty.
• Item-code semantics. items[] entries follow the "Item YYYYMMDD: " shape with an empty value after the colon. The dates align with description and typically encode the order date alongside a related notice or application date; they are not free-form descriptive items.
• Opaque filename. The order PDF's basename filename1.pdf is not a registrant-chosen filename and conveys no information beyond positional order in the submission. Identifying which fund an order pertains to requires reading metadata.json (specifically entities[] and linkToFilingDetails) or the body of the PDF itself.
• Single-document accessions. Although the dataset's collection rule includes all original EDGAR documents except images, ORDR submissions are in practice single-document submissions, so each accession folder is small and uniform.
• Cross-filing joins. For analyses that link an ORDR record back to the underlying N-8F application or to the historical filings of the deregistering fund, the join key is entities[].cik (or the CIK embedded in the EDGAR archive URL), not the surrogate-CIK accession number. The 811 file number in entities[].fileNo provides a secondary join key against the SEC's investment-company registration register.
• No XBRL surface. ORDR submissions carry no XBRL or other structured-data instance; linkToXbrl is empty and dataFiles is an empty array on every record.

Who Files or Publishes This Dataset, and When

Who issues the record

Each record in this dataset is an order issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, not a filing prepared by a registrant. The SEC grants deregistration of a registered investment company under Section 8(f) of the Investment Company Act of 1940, and the resulting order is disseminated on EDGAR as form type N-8F ORDR. This produces a filer/subject split that is essential to working with the data:

• EDGAR filer: the SEC, using its surrogate filer identity (CIK 9999999997) for Commission-issued orders, notices, and releases.
• Legal subject: the deregistering investment company, identified by company name, CIK, and Investment Company Act file number (the 811-series).

Subject population

The subjects of N-8F ORDR records are entities that previously held an active Investment Company Act registration under Section 8(a):

• open-end management investment companies (mutual funds), including individual series within series trusts
• closed-end management investment companies
• unit investment trusts (UITs), including insurance separate accounts organized as UITs
• face-amount certificate companies (rare)
• insurance separate accounts registered as management ICs or UITs

Out-of-scope deregistrations include operating companies terminating only Exchange Act reporting (Form 15), private funds relying on Section 3(c)(1) or Section 3(c)(7) (never registered), and exchange-traded products organized as commodity pools or grantor trusts (not registered as ICs).

Triggering sequence: application, notice, order

N-8F ORDR records arise from a three-step Section 8(f) procedure:

1. Application. The fund files a Form N-8F application under Section 8(f) of the Investment Company Act, Rule 8f-1 (which prescribes Form N-8F as the application vehicle and the required showings for deregistration), and Rule 0-2 (general procedural requirements for applications, including verification and service). The application asks the Commission to declare that the applicant has ceased to be an investment company.
2. Notice. After staff review by the Division of Investment Management, the Commission publishes a notice of the application (typically as an N-8F NTC release on EDGAR and in the Federal Register), opening a 25-day period during which interested persons may request a hearing.
3. Order. If no hearing is requested (or none is deemed warranted) and the Commission is satisfied the applicant has ceased to be an investment company, it issues the deregistration order. That order is the N-8F ORDR record captured in this dataset.

This dataset captures only the terminal granting order, not the underlying application or the intervening notice. The application is a separate EDGAR submission filed under the fund's own CIK; the notice is disseminated as a different form type (N-8F NTC).

Common factual triggers behind the application

A fund typically pursues a Section 8(f) order after one of:

• liquidation with substantially all assets distributed to shareholders
• merger or reorganization into another registered investment company
• conversion to a structure outside the Section 3(a) IC definition, or qualification for an IC exclusion
• abandonment of registration (for example, a series registered but never seeded, or a UIT whose trust period has ended)
• any other event by which the entity has ceased to be an investment company within the statutory meaning

Timing logic

Issuance is event-driven, not periodic:

• the order is issued only after the Form N-8F application is filed
• only after the notice has been published and the 25-day notice-and-objection period has elapsed without a hearing request the Commission deems warranted
• there is no fixed calendar deadline; the application-to-order interval typically runs from a few weeks to a few months, depending on staff review and any amendments

Records are therefore spread continuously through time rather than clustered around fiscal-year ends, with a long-run average near 140 orders per year and variation driven by industry consolidation and waves of series liquidations.

Important distinctions

• Filer vs. subject. The EDGAR filer is always the SEC (CIK 9999999997); the analytically meaningful party is the named investment company, identified by CIK and 811-number.
• Application vs. notice vs. order. Three distinct EDGAR submissions are produced in the Section 8(f) lifecycle: the fund's Form N-8F application, the Commission's N-8F NTC notice, and the Commission's N-8F ORDR order. Only the orders are in this dataset.
• Withdrawn or contested applications. Not every application produces an order; applications may be withdrawn, deemed defective, or subject to hearing. Only issued orders appear here.
• Trust-level vs. series-level. IC Act registration attaches at the trust or company level (one 811-number). A single series wind-down within a still-live multi-series trust generally does not produce an N-8F ORDR; the dataset typically reflects deregistration of an entire registrant.
• Other deregistration regimes. Operating-company exits via Form 15 (Exchange Act) and fund exits captured only through Form N-CEN final-filing indicators do not appear here. Absence of an N-8F ORDR does not, on its own, prove a fund remains active.
• Pre-2009 orders. Section 8(f) orders existed since 1940 but were historically disseminated through Commission release channels; discrete EDGAR submissions under form type N-8F ORDR begin in June 2009.

How This Dataset Differs From Similar Datasets or Filings

Form N-8F ORDR is unusual on EDGAR: it is a Commission-issued order, not a registrant filing, and it operates only under Section 8(f) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 to terminate a fund's registered investment company status. The closest comparison points fall into three groups: the other documents in the N-8F sequence, parallel exit mechanisms under different statutes, and the registration and periodic filings that bracket a fund's active life.

Closest related datasets

Form N-8F (the application)

• Filer: the investment company. Document type: application under Section 8(f) of the 1940 Act, signed by fund officers, reciting factual grounds (assets distributed, merger consummated, fund liquidated).
• N-8F ORDR is the Commission's responsive order on that application.
• Operational consequence: the application requests deregistration; the order grants it. The exit becomes legally effective on the ORDR date, not the application date.

Form N-8F NTC (notice of application)

• Filer: the SEC. Document type: public notice that an N-8F application is pending, opening a window (typically 25 days) for interested persons to request a hearing.
• The NTC is procedural and forward-looking; the ORDR is the disposition that follows. Together: application — notice — order, all tied to one Investment Company Act file number.

Form N-54A and N-54C (BDC elections)

• Filer: the company. Statute: Section 54 of the 1940 Act. Form N-54A elects business development company status; Form N-54C withdraws that election.
• N-54C is a registrant-filed withdrawal of a sub-status election. N-8F ORDR is a Commission-issued order fully deregistering the entity from 1940 Act registration.
• A BDC winding down typically files N-54C; a registered mutual fund or closed-end fund exits through the N-8F application/ORDR sequence. They are not interchangeable.

Parallel exit mechanisms under other statutes

Form 15, 15-12B, 15-12G, 15-15D

• Filer: the registrant (almost always an operating company, occasionally a fund with separate 1934 Act obligations). Statute: Securities Exchange Act of 1934, Sections 12(g) and 15(d) (with 12(b) for Form 15-12B).
• Document type: registrant-filed certification/notice that takes effect automatically on filing (subject to conditions); no SEC order issues.
• Operational consequence: ends 1934 Act periodic reporting (10-K, 10-Q, 8-K). Does not affect 1940 Act status.
• A liquidating fund with both registrations may file a Form 15 variant in parallel with the N-8F sequence; the two are complementary, not substitutes.

Form 25 and 25-NSE

• Filer: the issuer (Form 25) or the exchange (25-NSE). Statute: Section 12 of the 1934 Act and Rule 12d2-2.
• Document type: notice of removal of a class of securities from listing on a national exchange.
• Consequence: delisting, a market-structure event at the security level. Registration and reporting often continue afterward. N-8F ORDR, by contrast, is an entity-level deregistration under the 1940 Act; many deregistered funds were never exchange-listed.

Form 1-Z

• Filer: the Reg A issuer. Statute: Securities Act of 1933, Regulation A (Rule 257).
• Document type: registrant-filed exit report for a Reg A offering, terminating Tier 2 ongoing reporting.
• The only meaningful similarity to N-8F ORDR is the "exit" framing. Different statute, different filer, no SEC order, no 1933 Act effect.

Filings that bracket a fund's active life

Form N-1A, N-2, N-3, N-4, N-6 (fund registration statements)

• Filer: the investment company. Statute: 1940 Act and 1933 Act (dual registration).
• Document type: registration statements for open-end funds (Form N-1A), closed-end funds (Form N-2), management separate accounts (Form N-3), variable annuity separate accounts (Form N-4), and variable life separate accounts (Form N-6).
• Lifecycle position: these begin the registered fund's life. N-8F ORDR ends it. Pairing the two yields a complete entry-to-exit record for a given CIK.

Form N-CEN and N-PORT (active-life reports)

• Filer: the registered investment company. Statute: 1940 Act, Rules 30a-1 (Form N-CEN, annual census) and 30b1-9 (Form N-PORT, monthly portfolio holdings; successor to N-Q).
• Document type: structured XML/XBRL data filings during the fund's operating life.
• N-8F ORDR is the terminal marker for these streams: once issued, the fund stops filing them. Content overlap is zero (the ORDR is a short legal order; N-PORT is granular holdings data), but ORDR records let researchers distinguish true fund exits from reporting gaps.

Boundary summary

Three attributes together make Form N-8F ORDR distinct and non-substitutable:

• Authorship: SEC output (Division of Investment Management, delegated authority), not a registrant filing. This separates it from every form on this page except N-8F NTC.
• Statute: Section 8(f) of the 1940 Act. No analog exists in the 1934 Act Form 15 family, the Section 12 Form 25 family, or the Reg A Form 1-Z exit.
• Lifecycle role: terminal and dispositive. The N-8F application requests the exit and the NTC announces it, but only the ORDR is the legal act that ends registered investment company status, anchored to a specific CIK, 1940 Act file number, and underlying application.

Related filings complement N-8F ORDR: the application supplies reasoning, the NTC supplies pendency, registration statements and N-CEN/N-PORT supply operating history, and Form 15 variants cover any parallel 1934 Act reporting obligations. None of them carry the deregistration order itself.

Who Uses This Dataset

The audience for the Form N-8F ORDR Files Dataset is narrow and legal-operational. Across roles, users treat the order as authoritative evidence of fund termination and pull from a small set of fields: entities[].cik, entities[].fileNo, entities[].companyName, filedAt, the Item YYYYMMDD codes, and the body of the order PDF.

Investment company counsel at law firms

1940 Act partners and associates use the dataset to confirm that an N-8F application they filed has produced a granted order, to measure application-to-order elapsed time, and to build precedent files. They join entities[].cik and entities[].fileNo back to their docket, read the order PDF for findings and any imposed conditions, and cite recent orders when advising trustees on expected timing or drafting comparable applications.

In-house legal and compliance at fund sponsors

Fund secretaries and 1940 Act compliance officers archive the order as proof that an 811 file has been formally retired. They use entities[].cik, entities[].fileNo, entities[].companyName, and the order date for board minutes, compliance testing logs, exam responses, and entity-register closeout. The PDF itself is filed in the fund's permanent legal record.

Fund administrators, transfer agents, and custodians

Service providers trigger contract close-out, EDGAR access termination, and final tax and shareholder reporting on the order date. They key on entities[].cik and entities[].fileNo to drive automated cleanup of filing calendars and client masters. Where the order recites a merger, the PDF identifies the surviving fund, telling the administrator where to send residual books and records.

Fund auditors and assurance teams

Auditors performing final-period audits of liquidated or merged funds retain the order PDF in workpapers as third-party termination evidence supporting subsequent-events analysis and final N-CEN or N-CSR sign-off. They reconcile entities[].fileNo and the order date against management representations about wind-down completion.

Fund-data and analytics vendors

Commercial fund-database teams use the dataset to date fund-death events precisely and to distinguish liquidations from mergers in classification schemas. entities[].cik, entities[].fileNo, and filedAt mark a fund as definitively terminated rather than merely inactive; the PDF body supplies the closure rationale (asset distribution, merger, cessation), which feeds survivorship flags, flow series, and family change logs.

Academic finance and economics researchers

Researchers studying fund attrition, family reorganization, and survivorship bias use the order date as a regulator-confirmed endpoint when constructing unbiased panels. They join entities[].cik and entities[].fileNo to broader fund datasets and parse the PDF for cessation reason in hazard models and consolidation studies.

Quant and product strategy teams at asset managers

Backtesting and product-rationalization teams use the order date as the authoritative point at which a fund leaves the investable universe, preventing look-ahead in simulations and competitor peer-group construction. The cessation reason in the PDF lets them tag exits as voluntary liquidation, intra-family merger, or strategic restructuring for competitive intelligence.

RegTech and legal-research platforms

Vendors maintaining searchable corpora of Commission orders ingest metadata.json for normalized indices on CIK, file number, accession, and order date, and OCR the PDFs for full-text search and citation linking. Their downstream users are the same law firms and in-house teams above.

M&A and restructuring advisors in asset management

Advisors on asset-manager transactions use recent orders to map which complexes are actively rationalizing product lines, informing target screening. Post-deal, they confirm that deregistration of merged-away funds has closed by matching entities[].fileNo and the order date against transaction covenants and integration milestones.

Financial journalists and market historians

Reporters covering asset-management consolidation cite entities[].companyName, entities[].fileNo, and the order date to verify fund closures, and quote the PDF's narrative when describing the regulatory finality of an exit. Aggregated across years, the dataset supports coverage of attrition trends and ETF-versus-mutual-fund substitution.

Specific Use Cases

The dataset supports a narrow set of operational and analytical workflows centered on confirmed fund deregistrations under Section 8(f) of the 1940 Act. Each workflow below is pinned to specific record fields and a concrete deliverable.

Building a clean fund-termination panel for survivorship-bias correction

Researchers and quant teams construct a panel of definitive fund-death events by extracting entities[].cik, entities[].fileNo, entities[].companyName, and filedAt from every record, then joining entities[].cik against CRSP, Morningstar, or N-CEN/N-PORT histories. The order date becomes the regulator-confirmed exit timestamp, replacing heuristics like "last N-PORT filed plus six months." The deliverable is a CIK-keyed termination table that drives hazard models, attrition rates, and unbiased return panels.

Liquidation-versus-merger classification for fund-data vendors

Database operations teams parse the order PDF body to tag each exit as voluntary liquidation, intra-family merger, asset transfer to an exempt entity, or other cessation, and write the resulting label back against entities[].cik and entities[].fileNo. The merger cases yield surviving-fund pointers, which feed family change logs and "fund X became fund Y" linkage tables. Output: an enriched fund-master row carrying a closure-reason code and, where applicable, a successor CIK.

Application-to-order timing benchmarks for 1940 Act counsel

Investment-company lawyers join the dataset's filedAt and entities[].fileNo to their internal docket of Form N-8F applications (or to public N-8F and N-8F NTC filings under the same 811 number) to compute application-to-order and notice-to-order elapsed days. Aggregating across hundreds of orders produces percentile timing curves used in client memos, board pre-reads, and deregistration project plans. The order PDFs themselves populate a precedent library indexed by cessation rationale.

Compliance closeout and EDGAR-access termination at administrators

Fund administrators, transfer agents, and custodians ingest new monthly ZIPs and match entities[].cik plus entities[].fileNo against client and filing-calendar masters. A match triggers automated workflows: removing N-CEN, N-PORT, and N-CSR obligations from the calendar, closing EDGAR filer access, finalizing tax and shareholder reporting, and archiving the order PDF to the fund's permanent legal record. The deliverable is an exception-free monthly reconciliation showing every retired 811 file is closed in internal systems.

Asset-manager rationalization tracking for M&A and product strategy

Strategy and corporate-development teams aggregate entities[].companyName and filedAt by sponsor family across rolling windows to identify complexes actively retiring product. Combined with the merger-versus-liquidation tag from the PDF, the output is a per-complex attrition dashboard showing rationalization velocity, useful in target screening, peer benchmarking, and post-deal integration tracking against deal covenants that require deregistration of merged-away funds.

Searchable Commission-order corpus for RegTech platforms

Legal-research vendors index metadata.json (CIK, fileNo, accessionNo, filedAt, items[] date codes) into normalized tables and OCR every filename1.pdf to populate a full-text-searchable order corpus. linkToFilingDetails is preserved as the canonical citation URL. End users query by fund name, 811 number, date range, or order language, and link directly back to the SEC archive copy.

Dataset Access

The Form N-8F ORDR Files Dataset is available through three access patterns: a JSON metadata endpoint, a full-archive download, and per-container downloads. Authenticated download endpoints accept the API key either as a ?token=YOUR_API_KEY query parameter or via an Authorization: YOUR_API_KEY header.

Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n8f-ordr-files.json

This endpoint returns dataset-level metadata (name, description, last updated timestamp, earliest sample date, total records, total size, form types, container format, and file types), the full-dataset download URL, and the list of all monthly container files with their individual download URLs, sizes, record counts, and updated timestamps. Use it to discover available containers and to monitor which monthly archives changed in the most recent refresh, so you can selectively re-download only the containers that were updated. This endpoint does not require an API key.

Example response:

          1
          {
        

          2
            "datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-6985-993f-24bb5b3e2da6",
        

          3
            "datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n8f-ordr-files.zip",
        

          4
            "name": "Form N-8F ORDR Files Dataset",
        

          5
            "updatedAt": "2026-04-24T03:02:46.337Z",
        

          6
            "earliestSampleDate": "2009-06-01",
        

          7
            "totalRecords": 2246,
        

          8
            "totalSize": 71616026,
        

          9
            "formTypes": ["N-8F ORDR"],
        

          10
            "containerFormat": "ZIP",
        

          11
            "fileTypes": ["PDF", "JSON"],
        

          12
            "containers": [
        

          13
              {
        

          14
                "downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n8f-ordr-files/2026/2026-04.zip",
        

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

          16
                "size": 1048576,
        

          17
                "records": 12,
        

          18
                "updatedAt": "2026-04-24T03:02:46.337Z"
        

          19
              }
        

          20
            ]
        

          21
          }
        

Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n8f-ordr-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads the complete dataset as a single ZIP archive covering all filings from 2009-06 to the present. Once extracted, the archive contains monthly folders, each holding per-accession subfolders with a metadata.json file and the associated PDF order document(s). This endpoint requires an API key.

Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n8f-ordr-files/2026/2026-04.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads a single monthly container ZIP instead of the full archive. Each monthly ZIP contains per-accession folders with metadata.json and the PDF document(s) for that month's filings. Use the containers array from the dataset index JSON to enumerate available months. This endpoint requires an API key.

Frequently Asked Questions

What form does this dataset cover?

The dataset covers EDGAR form type N-8F ORDR: orders issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission deregistering registered investment companies under Section 8(f) of the Investment Company Act of 1940. It does not include the underlying Form N-8F application or the procedural N-8F NTC notice.

What does one record in this dataset represent?

One record is a single accession-numbered EDGAR submission carrying one Commission deregistration order. On disk, the record is a per-accession folder containing a metadata.json descriptor and the order document itself as a PDF (filename1.pdf).

Who files the underlying form?

The SEC issues the order, filing it on EDGAR under its surrogate filer CIK 9999999997 rather than under any registrant's CIK. The legal subject of the order — the deregistering investment company — is identified inside metadata.json by entities[].cik, entities[].companyName, and the 811-series Investment Company Act file number in entities[].fileNo.

Why does the accession folder always start with 9999999997?

9999999997 is EDGAR's surrogate CIK for filings made by Commission staff (orders, notices, and other Commission-issued documents). Because the SEC, not the fund, files the order, every N-8F ORDR accession number begins with that prefix. To join an order back to the deregistering fund's other EDGAR filings, use entities[].cik, not the accession number.

What time period does the dataset cover?

Coverage runs from June 2009 to the present. The 2009 boundary reflects when discrete EDGAR submissions under form type N-8F ORDR began; pre-2009 Section 8(f) orders existed but were disseminated through Commission release channels rather than as structured EDGAR submissions.

What file format is the dataset distributed in?

The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers. Each ZIP unpacks to a month-named folder containing per-accession subfolders, and each subfolder holds a metadata.json (JSON) and the order document as a PDF. The dataset also exposes a JSON metadata endpoint for discovering and selectively re-downloading individual monthly containers.

How does this dataset differ from Form N-8F and Form N-8F NTC?

Form N-8F is the application the fund files under its own CIK requesting deregistration; Form N-8F NTC is the Commission's notice opening a 25-day hearing window; Form N-8F ORDR is the Commission's terminal granting order. Only the ORDR is the legal act that ends registered investment company status, and only the ORDR is in this dataset. The exit becomes legally effective on the ORDR date, not the application date.