WASHINGTON — The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s EMMA website will now display both the initial offering dollar price and yield for a bond, when available, the MSRB announced today.
Previously, EMMA displayed the initial offering price for new issues as either a dollar price or yield.
The new information will be available thanks to changes to the MSRB’s rules G-32 on primary offering disclosures and G-34 on CUSIP, new issue, and market information requirements. Approved by the SEC in December of last year, the changes allow underwriters to fulfill some new-issue reporting requirements by filing information with the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.’s New Issue Information Dissemination Service, or NIIDS.
That data then becomes available on EMMA. Previously, G-32 required underwriters to submit a Form G-32 to the EMMA system by the end of the first day a muni transaction was executed, disclosing information such as the issuers’s name, a description of the issue, the CUSIP number, the principal amount of the bonds and the initial offering prices or yields.
Rule G-34 required underwriters to submit much of the same information to NIIDS within two hours of the time an issuer awards bonds to an underwriter. Underwriters will still be required to submit certain new-issue information on Form G-32, such as underwriting spreads and the existence of continuing disclosure agreements.
“These changes provide more meaningful primary market information to market participants about the initial offering price and facilitate comparisons to trade data, which is normally displayed with both a dollar price and yield,” the MSRB said.
