Bonds

As climate change accelerates, electric grids are expected to experience severe weather events that are well beyond the historical conditions for which they were built. In this session, moderator Donald J. Gonzales, senior managing director of the San Antonio office of Estrada Hinojosa & Co., Inc. is joined by panelists Chris Jumper, director of Assured;

Municipal bond market participants got little of what they hoped for fromf the slimmed-down bipartisan infrastructure agreement the Senate advanced this week. That raises the market’s stake in the outcome of Senate Democrats’ plan to move a massive social spending plan along party lines later this year. Despite the inclusion of a few provisions applauded

Municipals were a touch weaker outside of 15 years Wednesday as U.S. Treasury yields rose after the Federal Open Market Committee minutes were released but pared back losses as the afternoon progressed and were back at Tuesday’s levels near the close. The tapering conversation continues, but Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell said the FOMC

The Federal Reserve has toyed for years with opening something called a standing repo facility to prevent short-term rates markets from blowing up. Following a 2019 disruption and another early in the pandemic, the central bank finally took that step. The Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve building Bloomberg News The permanent repurchase-agreement facility, one for

A panel of former top global economic policy makers on Wednesday warned that major trading disruptions in U.S. Treasuries are likely to increase unless reforms are made, adding to pressure on American regulators to fix structural issues that contributed to last year’s market meltdown. “Confidence in the U.S. Treasury market, and its ability to function

The Puerto Rico Oversight Board reached a deal for an improved treatment of the Puerto Rico Infrastructure and Finance Authority rum tax bonds with two bond insurers, which had been key opponents of the central government debt deal. The board announced the deal with Ambac Assurance and Financial Guaranty Insurance Company Tuesday morning in a

Municipals were slightly firmer in secondary trading while new-issues were repriced to lower yields from initial pricing wires. U.S. Treasuries were stronger and equities sold off ahead of the FOMC meeting Wednesday. The current market technicals combined with a slowdown in issuance is creating a general malaise in the municipal market, according to a New

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has won over a number of influential Senate Democrats who are prepared to back him for another term, though a key pair remain holdouts and are unhappy with his leadership on regulation. A number of Democrats praise his handling of the coronavirus crisis in particular and say they trust President

The Government Finance Research Center at University of Illinois Chicago has tapped public and not-for-profit financial management professional Deborah Carroll to fill the director’s shoes being vacated by the retiring Michael Pagano. Carroll comes from the University of Central Florida where she was an associate professor in the School of Public Administration and the director

Municipals were stronger on the short end, hitting record low levels for the second time this year, in quiet trading while U.S. Treasuries were treading water and equities did much the same as all markets await Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting announcement. Triple-A benchmarks moved one to two basis points lower inside of five

Armed with a revised outlook to stable from Fitch Ratings, Philadelphia plans to issue roughly $429 million of Series 2021 general obligation bonds on Tuesday. Goldman, Sachs & Co. is the senior manager. The negotiated sale will feature $297.8 million of Series A tax-exempt bonds for the city’s capital program, and $131.5 million of Series

A group of bondholders with a stake in Great Lakes Senior Living Communities LLC’s $380 million of debt agreed to a forbearance that diverts funds earmarked for debt service to pay for capital needs under a restructuring designed to help the facilities recover from the COVID-19 pandemic’s blows. The bonds sold through the Arizona Industrial

A busy Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board quarterly board meeting saw Patrick Brett selected as fiscal year 2022 chair, the adoption of a multi-year strategic plan, decisions on several regulatory initiatives and the adoption of a $43 million operating budget. Those and other developments emerged at the MSRB’s in-person meeting held July 21-22 in Washington. Brett,

The Puerto Rico Oversight Board cast doubt Friday on a temporary deal between the truckers and the interim governor which is pausing the truckers’ strike. Around 9:30 p.m. Thursday Gov. Pedro Pierluisi announced the temporary deal in two tweets. The deal was with the striking truckers’ union, Frente Amplio de Camioneros. Pierluisi was off the

Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp. agreed to pay $230 million to resolve federal charges in connection with an alleged bribery scheme involving a $1 billion public bailout for two nuclear power plants owned by a bankrupt subsidiary with municipal debt. Federal authorities charged the public utility holding company with conspiring to commit honest services wire fraud.

What bond-market guru Mohammed El-Erian said Friday was enough to make bond investors listen like they’re in an old E.F. Hutton commercial. “Inflation is not going to be transitory,” the chief economic adviser at Allianz SE said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. El-Erian likened it to his belief in 1999 that Argentina would default,

Municipals were steady in typical summer Friday style ahead of a less-than-robust new-issue calendar to end July. The U.S. Treasury 10-year ends 10 basis points higher than it started the week, but back to levels of a week ago, while the stock market rallied and earnings pushed them to all-time record highs Friday. Triple-A benchmarks

The Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority plans to refund $1.8 billion of outstanding 2012 debt in an August deal, coming into a market that is starved for high-yield paper. For several months the authority and the Puerto Rico Oversight Board has mentioned the possibility of refunding the authority’s Series 2012A bonds. On Friday it

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is armed with billions from several rounds of federal funding. Toll and tax revenue is up, other indicators are positive and commuters are probably spared a fare increase for this year. But as he outlined scenarios related to the authority’s rolling four-year financial plan and how it hinges on post-pandemic ridership

Municipal trading was light and triple-A benchmarks were a touch stronger on the short end as the last of the week’s larger-than-usual calendar closed accounts and the municipal market largely charted its own course. For the 20th consecutive week, Refinitiv Lipper reported inflows into municipal bond mutual funds, this time $1.727 billion, with high-yield seeing

Analysts say a strike of Puerto Rico truckers is a threat to the island’s economy and a challenge for the Oversight Board. The board spent a page in the most recent fiscal plan talking about the need to not extend the minimum rates to privately negotiated trucking contracts. The truckers are striking for this as

SWS Capital Management’s Clear Vision Impact Fund is bulking up on funding and staff. SWS serves as the investment manager for the fund launched by Siebert Williams Shank & Co. LLC last summer as an affiliate. It has built its initial $25 million fund up to $100 million and hired Shannon Smith as a vice

Municipal yields rose slightly outside of 10-years after U.S. Treasuries swung back up double-digit basis points from Monday’s lows as stocks rebounded from large losses on Monday. Municipals largely ignored the losses in UST as triple-A benchmark curves saw cuts of two to four basis points out longer while the short end of the curve

The top bond counsel firms combined for a total of $220.03 billion in 6,077 transactions in the first half of 2021, up from the $191.51 billion in 5,124 deals in the first half of 2020. Only one firm remained in the same spot they were at this point last year, the rest of the rankings

Moody’s Investors Service has withdrawn its ratings for Puerto Rico and its various authorities for its own business reasons, the agency said Tuesday. The withdrawal actions “are not related to the current ongoing restructuring processes under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act,” the agency said in a release. Moody’s would not comment

eMerge Americas, a venture-backed platform focused on changing Miami into the tech hub of the Americas, closed a round of investment led by Florida Funders, the firm announced on Tuesday. Florida Funders is a a venture capital fund and an angel investor network, and its investment in eMerge Americas is aimed at helping Miami’s tech

California Treasurer Fiona Ma is facing a lawsuit from a former executive director who is accusing her of sexual harassment, discrimination and wrongful termination. Judith Blackwell, who at one point oversaw two key housing finance agencies, said the treasurer exposed her naked rear end to her many times and gave her gifts such as edible

President Joe Biden said he believes the surge in U.S. inflation is temporary and that he has told Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell that he respects the central bank’s independence. Biden said Monday at the White House that recent price increases are “temporary,” countering Republican arguments that the president’s economic spending plans would cause inflation

The National Federation of Municipal Analysts has completed work on a white paper calling for targeted emergency event disclosures from state and local governments. The document, dated June but announced earlier this month by NFMA, is the final draft of a paper first floated in March. While the paper focuses on COVID-19 disclosure, NFMA has

Municipals underperformed a flight-to-safety rally in U.S. Treasuries as COVID-19 and its variants surge around the globe, pushing edgy investors to flee the stock market, as some contemplate the idea the economic recovery has peaked, and will potentially regress from the virus’ effects. Municipal triple-A benchmarks were pushed to lower yields by one to three