Dan Seymour

Alexandra & James LLC, the family business run by Jim Lebenthal and his daughter Alexandra, announced three key hires this month as the firm ramps up its wealth management and syndicate businesses.

National Public Finance Guarantee Corp. is sharing what it knows about municipal bonds.

Barclays Global Investors plans to launch a family of municipal bond exchange-traded funds designed to behave more like munis themselves by liquidating at maturity.

To the list of aspirants fighting to break into the bond insurance market, add one more name: BondModel Co., a New York-based outfit founded by former Goldman, Sachs & Co. public finance people.

It appears the wave of cash flooding the industry all year may have finally crested.

A little more than a year ago, precisely at the time people were scrambling to protect the value of their municipal bonds, hedging to protect the value of munis became untenable.

Three professors from Willamette University have published a study reaching a surprising conclusion — municipalities do not sell more bonds when federal tax rates go up.

The sell-off in municipals last week finally stemmed the tide of cash that had flooded municipal bond mutual funds for the better part of a year.

Assured/FSA is the only player in the game. The rest of the bond insurance industry is either insolvent, politicking for ratings from the rating agencies, or taking their ball and going home.

CIFG Assurance is working on another restructuring as the deteriorating economy has once again crippled the bond insurer’s financial strength, the New York Insurance Department confirmed yesterday.

Life has gotten easier for municipal bond exchange-traded funds.

Banks ramped up purchases of municipal bonds in the first half of the year in the wake of federal legislation designed to stimulate banks’ interest in state and local government debt.

Municipal closed-end funds notched another stellar month in September as investors continued to flock to the sector’s fat tax-exempt yields.

The tide of money washing over municipal bond mutual funds eased up a touch last week.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is closing in on Citi in the race to be the number one municipal bond underwriter for 2009.

State and local government tax revenue tumbled in the second quarter, the Census Bureau reported yesterday, as a contracting economy and escalating unemployment stymied tax collections.

Build America Bonds continued to reshape public finance last month, shifting more than a quarter of state and local government debt into the taxable bond market.

Dwindling yields on municipal bonds have done nothing to deter investors from continuing to sock away unparalleled sums of cash into municipal bond mutual funds.

Invesco Powershares is preparing to launch an exchange-traded fund linked to Build America Bonds, fusing two of the hottest ideas in public finance.

Retail investors and mutual funds snapped up municipal bonds in the second quarter, powering the fastest growth in outstanding state and local government debt in two years.