MSRB Elects Nat Singer as Incoming Chair, Seven New Members

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WASHINGTON — Nat Singer, senior managing director at Swap Financial Group, will become the new chair of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board on Oct. 1.

Besides Singer, the board elected as vice chair, Colleen Woodell, former chief credit officer of global corporate and government ratings for Standard & Poor's, as well as seven new members at its quarterly meeting last week in New York City.

The new 21-member public-majority board, whose members serve three-year terms on a staggered basis, will address municipal market structure issues, including additional price transparency for investors, the MSRB said in a release.

Singer, who has served on the board since 2013, will replace current chair Kym Arnone, the managing director and head of municipal securitization initiatives at Barclays. At Swap Financial he is responsible for analyzing strategies, polices and pricing of municipal bonds as well as derivative-based products. He previously was senior managing director and chief operating officer for Bear Stearns's municipal bond department and has served as an advisor to the Government Accounting Standards Board on its accounting and financial reporting standards for derivative products. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a BA in engineering.

Woodell has also served on the board since 2013. She formerly worked at First Albany Corp., Fitch Ratings and Moody's Investors Service. She has a BA from Wells College. Arnone said Singer and Woodell will give the board "outstanding leadership."

"I have known Nat and Colleen for decades and they rank among the most committed and knowledgeable market experts," Arnone said in the release. "They will ensure that the MSRB continues to fulfill its important mission to protect investors, municipal entities and the public interest."

Of the seven new board members elected, four are public and three are regulated. The public members include Ronald Dieckman, a former investment banker. Dieckman, is now retired but was senior vice president and director of the public finance and municipal bond trading and underwriting department at J.J.B. Hilliard, W.L. Lyons in Louisville, Ky., until 2011. Also elected as public member was Andrew Sanford, a senior vice president and senior portfolio manager of municipal bond investments at The Chubb Corp. and former managing director at RBC Capital Markets where he managed the tender option bond program.

The other two public members are Megan Kilgore, the assistant city auditor in Columbus, Ohio's Auditor's Office and Mark Kim, chief financial officer at the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority.

The new regulated members include two bank representatives. One is Ed Tishelman, the managing director and head of the TD Securities Municipal Finance Group, where he is responsible for public finance as well as the underwriting, trading and distribution of all municipal securities and products. The other is Dale Turnipseed, an executive director at J.P. Morgan, where he is a muni bond salesman.

The other regulated member and the board's municipal advisor representative is Renee Boicourt, managing director and partner for Lamont Financial Services Corp.

Arnone said the board "is gaining a striking level of municipal securities expertise" with the new additions.

Members slated to leave the board before Oct. 1 include Arnone and current vice chair Marcy Edwards, a former senior financial policy advisor to the District of Columbia's chief financial officer as well as Utah treasurer Richard Ellis and Robin Wiessmann, secretary of Pennsylvania's Department of Banking and Securities.

Also leaving will be W. Bartley Hildreth, a professor in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University and Marianne Edmonds, senior managing director for Public Resources Advisory Group and the board's current municipal advisor representative, as well as Craig Noble, managing director and head of capital markets trading at Wells Fargo.

The MSRB received 78 applications for board membership including from several issuers such as Ivan Samstein, chief financial officer for Cook County, Ill., and a member of the Government Finance Officers' committee on governmental debt management, Julia Cooper, the director of finance for San Jose, Calif., and a former member of the GFOA debt committee, as well as Natalie Brill, chief of debt management for Los Angeles, Calif., and Richard Li, a public debt specialist for Milwaukee.

Several advisors applied including JoAnne Carter, a managing director at The PFM Group based in Arlington, Va., and Larry Kidwell, president of Kidwell & Co. and vice president of the National Association of Municipal Advisors

Some applicants were academics, including Richard Keevey, a professor at Rutgers University and former budget director and comptroller for New Jersey, and Tamar Frankel, a professor at Boston University Law School who was a former visiting scholar at the Securities and Exchange Commission in the late 1990s and focuses on fiduciary law, corporate governance, mutual funds, and financial regulations.

Other applicants included Triet Nguyen, a managing director of NewOak Capital, Andrew Kalotay, president of Andrew Kalotay Associates, and Richard Lehmann, founder and president of Securities Income Advisor.

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