Far West

The increasing popularity of electronic brokerage has led the MSRB to examine whether retail investors who trade municipal securities through broker-dealers' online systems have adequate protection under its rules.

SAN FRANCISCO — California's Legislative Analyst's Office said Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed budget policies could lead to a balanced budget within a few years.

Criteria for the expanded definition of sophisticated municipal market professional (SMMP), which takes effect July 9.

Broker-dealers will not have to make the same disclosures to wealthier, more sophisticated individual investors that they do to other investors under a revised MSRB interpretative notice approved by the SEC.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service has published a tax law compliance guide for issuers in conduit bond transactions.

Siebert Brandford Shank & Co. has boosted its ranks in California with the addition of an office in San Diego and top brass in its Los Angeles (Brian Corley) and Oakland (Anand Kesavan and Steven So) offices.

Moody's Investors Service downgraded to A2 from Aa3 the long-term issuer rating for Azusa, Calif. Analysts also lowered the rating for the city's 2003 lease revenue refunding certificates of participation to Baa1 from A2. A negative outlook was assigned.

With its former leadership mired in corruption charges and a new slate of City Council members and mayor in place, the next order of business for Bell, a Los Angeles-area working-class city of 50,000, is to adopt a workout plan for outstanding bond debt issued under previous city management.

Federal lawmakers and their staffs are wrong to think that tax-credit bonds could cost-effectively replace tax-exempt municipal bonds as a source of financing for state and local governments' projects, Citi said in a recent report.

A risk management officer of a New Jersey authority and a tax partner at a law firm in Chicago have been tapped to join the three-member tax-exempt bond group of an Internal Revenue Service advisory committee. Katherine A. Newell, director of risk management and ethics liaison officer at the New Jersey Educational Facilities Authority in Princeton, N.J., and Lorraine Tyson, a tax partner in the public finance practice group at Pugh, Jones & Johnson PC in Chicago, will take their seats on the panel after its June 6 meeting here.