Far West

ALAMEDA, Calif. — KeyBanc Capital Markets announced this week that it has hired the father-son team of John Urbina and Geoff Urbina to open a new Seattle office for the firm.

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., has introduced legislation that would exempt all water and sewer exempt facility debt from the private-activity bond volume cap.

ALAMEDA, Calif. — A Superior Court judge in California Tuesday upheld the state government’s shift of $2.05 billion away from local redevelopment agencies to help balance the budget.

CHICAGO — A marriage between Chicago-based United Airlines and Houston-based Continental Airlines may have a limited impact on their key airport facilities, as they operate mostly complementary routes, but it could add to the negative pressures posed by industry consolidation, market participants said yesterday.

WASHINGTON — The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board plans to propose easing draft rule changes so dealers would only have to disclose the political action committees controlled by bank-related and other affiliates and not the amounts of political contributions the PACs make to issuer officials, or the names of those who receive them.

WASHINGTON — Congress could save billions of dollars by prohibiting tax-exempt colleges and universities from earning arbitrage indirectly through endowments that are invested at higher interest rates than what they are paying on their tax-exempt bonds, the Congressional Budget Office concluded in a report.

The treasurer of California, the largest municipal bond issuer in the nation, is urging federal lawmakers to amend the pending financial regulatory reform bill to require buyers of municipal credit default swaps to have actual exposure to the issuer’s underlying securities.

DALLAS — On the heels of a Fitch Ratings downgrade, the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System plans to issue more than $1 billion of revenue bonds this week for operations in three states.

WASHINGTON — Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., soon plans to introduce legislation that would remove the cap on clean renewable energy bonds, following the transition of CREBs to a direct-pay system where issuers receive a 70% subsidy from the federal government to help with interest paid to bond holders.

State and local governments spent less in the first quarter of 2010 on infrastructure projects and new equipment despite a windfall of federal aid, figures released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Friday showed.