Finance

Columbia College Chicago was lowered one notch to BB-plus from BBB-minus by S&P Global Ratings, citing the school's falling headcount and diminished demand.

The top five featured in the ranking handled deals totalling more than $84 billion in par value.

The airport, also selling $412.8 million of new money, will join a bevy of issuers who have deployed a tender offer in the hope of realizing refunding savings.

Investors added $571.5 million from municipal bond mutual funds in the week ended Wednesday, following $224.6 million of outflows the prior week, according to LSEG Lipper data.

Port Freeport's decision to go property tax-free resulted in a revenue bond rating downgrade from S&P and raised disclosure questions.

The fund's sell-off in June shows the challenges of accurate pricing in the high-yield muni market.

Larger dealer networks lead to lower markups, but smaller networks show evidence of potential collusion and market manipulation, the paper said.

Longer-term munis have become more attractive, said Cooper Howard, a fixed income strategist at Charles Schwab.

An academic paper presented at the Brookings Institute's annual conference found that future wildfire risks are already having economically significant impacts on financial markets, municipal borrowing costs and vulnerable communities.

There is a buyer base that is a little bit "skeptical" of longer maturities, but it's more of a retail response, said Adam Congdon, a director at Payden & Rygel.

While the cost of small trades is higher than institutional trades across all fixed-income markets, the gap is more pronounced in the municipal bond market.

The primary market saw "decent subscriptions" last week, but the entire primary calendar came at "healthy concessions to where evals had been marked on existing bonds," Birch Creek strategists said.

The county comes to market on the strength of its recovery, according to the county's financial advisor.

First Southern LLC failed to timely and accurately report on trades executed for an affiliated hedge fund, FINRA said.

The week was a long-awaited reckoning with record supply, said Kim Olsan, senior fixed income portfolio manager at NewSquare Capital.

The top suite of firms oversaw deals amounting to more than $139 billion par value across 58% of the market.

Schools and governments turn to bonds to cover payouts in the wake of a California law that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on sex abuse claims.

Munis are "under pressure as elevated primary supply collides with lackluster seasonal reinvestment flows, leaving dealers heavy and buyers selective," said James Pruskowski, an investor and market strategist.

As the market continues to contend with the surge in issuance, investors still have a significant amount of cash that can be put to work, said Jeremy Holtz, a portfolio manager at Income Research + Management.

The top 10 underwriters for the first half of the year brought in more than $203 billion across nearly 2,000 issues.