Jack Casey

The House Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday postponed its scheduled release of a new bill to help Puerto Rico for what members hope will be only one day as discussions about acceptable revisions continued.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is charging a father, his son, and five of their associates with defrauding investors in Native American tribal bonds to pay for, among other things, their luxury expenses and legal costs associated with prior fraud charges.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is using Peter Cannava, a banker involved in an ill-fated private placement for a startup video game company, as a scapegoat and has no basis for charging him with defrauding investors, his lawyers claimed this week.

With the House Natural Resources Committee planning to release a new Puerto Rico bill on Wednesday and vote on it a week later, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew traveled to the commonwealth to hold meetings to drum up support for a legislative solution.

Municipal industry experts on Thursday urged analysts to continue focusing on how the presence of statutory liens can change the treatment of debt in bankruptcy proceedings and ratings analyses.

Infrastructure financing and tax reform will be major issues for presidential and other candidates in November, said municipal market participants.

A regulatory official and market participants sparred over the merits of the Securities and Exchange Commission's voluntary continuing disclosure enforcement initiative during a panel here on Wednesday while acknowledging the need to improve municipal disclosure.

The National Federation of Municipal Analysts presented awards to six municipal market professionals and one issuer during a luncheon at its annual conference here on Wednesday.

Treasury Department secretary Jack Lew on Monday sent a letter to congressional leaders warning them that further inaction on a bill to help Puerto Rico pending in the House could lead to a taxpayer-funded bailout.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board is opening an application window between May 3 and May 10 to allow more individuals associated with banks and broker-dealers to apply for a seat on next year’s board.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday approved Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board amendments to facilitate moving the municipal securities industry to a two- instead of three-day settlement cycle.

As Puerto Rico faces bond defaults on Monday and July 1 without legislative relief from Congress, analysts say new litigation is increasingly likely.

Dustin McDonald, the current director of the Government Finance Officers Association’s federal liaison center, is leaving GFOA on Friday to lead the marijuana technology company Weedmaps’ government relations practice.

A lawyer facing Securities and Exchange Commission charges that he violated federal securities laws as part of a pay-to-play scheme to secure Ohio pension business is arguing the commission’s charges cannot apply to him and should be dismissed.

A vote on the Puerto Rico bill may be stalled until mid-July as many, including unions and other groups, press for changes to address concerns over debt restructuring and oversight board provisions as well as to protect the island's pensioners

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board is making its trade data available through a research platform to individuals associated with more than 400 institutions around the world, but without the controversial anonymous dealer identifiers in a proposed new product still under development.

The two years since the announcement of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Municipalities Continuing Disclosure Cooperation initiative have contained vast improvements in disclosure for the municipal market but there are still issues to tackle and questions to ask as disclosure continues evolving, market participants speaking on a panel here said.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s proposal to require dealers acting as principals to disclose their markups and markdowns on retail confirmations would add complexity to the market and subject dealers to significant costs, dealers and others said here on Thursday.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board will move forward with a revised proposal that would mandate municipal securities transactions be closed out within 20 instead of 30 days of settlement, Lynnette Kelly, the MSRB’s executive director said on Monday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s municipal enforcement unit could be bringing more cases with concurrent criminal charges in the future as it plans to increase its coordination with the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.