Markets

With the trading week abridged for the Christmas holiday, and the end of the year rapidly approaching, the primary new-issue market is nearly inactive this week, as just $110 million of bonds and notes are scheduled to sell in the week’s three remaining sessions. This estimate is down sizably from the $1.4 billion of bonds priced last week, which in itself was a steep drop from weeks prior. Next week looks like being in holiday mode as well, with the market open for half a day Monday and closed Tuesday due to New Year’s Day. As of Friday afternoon, just $485 million was slated to price next week.“The market just wants the year to be done,” said Matt Fabian, managing director at Municipal Market Advisors. “It is doing what it can to close out the year as positively as possible, but it was a very difficult year. And now with the bond insurance situation, and the January reinvest, among other things, there’s a lot of uncertainty as to where next year will begin. At this point, the best scenario is to not be in the market.”In the week’s largest scheduled transaction, Indiana’s Merrillville Community School Corp. tomorrow will competitively sell $15.7 million of temporary loan warrants. The notes mature in December 2008.New York’s Cattaragus, Allegany, Erie, and Wyoming Counties Board of Cooperative Educational Services tomorrow will competitively sell $13 million of revenue anticipation notes. The notes mature in December 2008.Bergen Capital will price $12 million of multi-jurisdictional, multifamily housing revenue bonds in two series for Shalimar, Fla.Dyer, Ind., will competitively sell $11.4 million of taxable and tax-exempt warrants tomorrow. The $7.2 million of tax-exempt warrants mature in December 2008. The $4.2 million of taxable warrants mature next month.Hightstown, N.J., will competitively sell $7.3 million of bond anticipation notes tomorrow. The Bans mature in February 2008.In the week’s only scheduled competitive bond sale, Avon, Ind., will competitively sell $3.6 million of general obligation bonds tomorrow. The bonds mature from 2009 through 2028, and are callable at par in 2017. The credit is rated A3 by Moody’s Investors Service.

After 10 consecutive weeks of record inflows into municipal money market funds, outflows of $286.6 million were reported for the week ending Dec. 17. The decrease in assets puts the total in tax-free money market funds at $474.45 billion, according to the Money Fund Report. The report monitors 550 funds. Average seven-day yields over the same period were 2.67%, down 24 basis points from the week before, and down 40 basis points from two weeks ago. The average maturity is 32 days, the same when compared to the week that ended Dec. 10. This week’s data is the first outflow in some time, but it was very small. Last week, tax-free money funds had inflows of $12 billion and the week before had inflows that totaled roughly $5 billion. “I believe the outflows were due to corporate tax payments, it is something that we see around the Dec. 15,” said Connie Bugbee managing editor of the report. “So corporations that have money in tax-free funds can pull money out to pay taxes. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get it back next week.”Taxable funds had outflows of $28.10 billion, putting total net assets at $2.612 trillion. The combined total is $3.086 trillion of assets under management.

Fitch Ratings announced yesterday it was placing MBIA Insurance Corp. on negative watch after a comprehensive review of its residential mortgage-backed security portfolio found that the financial guarantor’s capital model falls below the guidelines needed to hold a triple-A rating by $1 billion. Fitch said in a press release that it would return MBIA to a stable outlook if, in the next four to six weeks, the company was able to “obtain further capital commitments and or put in place reinsurance or other risk mitigation measures.” Fitch said this is in addition to the $1 billion investment promised to MBIA by private-equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC on Dec. 10. “If MBIA is unable to address its capital shortfall in the noted timeframe, Fitch would expect to downgrade MBIA’s insurer financial strength ratings by one notch to AA-plus,” Fitch said. Fitch's announcement comes a day after Standard & Poor’s gave the firm a negative outlook, while affirming its triple-A rating. Late Wednesday, MBIA announced that it had $30.6 billion of exposure to collateralized debt obligations potentially tied to subprime mortgages. Standard & Poor’s said it knew about the CDO exposure, and would not alter the company’s triple-A rating as a result. “I think the most important thing to realize was that all of this was known by the rating agencies when they came out [with updates of credit ratings for the financial guarantors] over the last couple of weeks,” said Morningstar Inc. analist Jim Ryan, who covers the stock of Ambac Assurance Corp. and Security Capital Assurance in addition to MBIA. Last week, Moody’s Investors Services issued a much-anticipated review of the bond insurers, and also gave MBIA a negative outlook. The latest news comes in the aftermath of the Standard & Poor’s credit rating report on Wednesday. In addition to moving MBIA to negative outlook, the agency also affirmed the triple-A rating for Ambac and XL Capital Assurance, while moving their outlooks to negative from stable. Standard & Poor’s also downgraded ACA Financial Guaranty Corp. to CCC from A, and placed triple-A rated Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. on negative watch. Equity investors reacted to the disclosure by selling MBIA stock, sending it down $7.07, or 26.2%, from an opening price of $23.63, at the close of trading yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock price opened the year at $73.10, but has lost 73% of its value since then. This is the latest activity in a tumultuous six-month period in the bond insurance industry, as the collateralized debt obligations insured by the financial guarantors have lost billions of dollars in mark-to-market values. It all began on July 31, when Fitch placed Radian Group Inc., including the financial guarantor subsidiary Radian Asset Assurance Inc., on negative watch after market dislocations caused the collateralized debt obligations that the company insures to lose value. In early September, Fitch went ahead and downgraded the company to A-plus from AA, citing worsening market conditions for CDOs backed by subprime mortgages and the failed merger of the company with MGIC Investment Corp. At the time many analysts discounted the Radian downgrade because it was the market’s second lowest-rated bond insurer, and because many felt certain that losses on subprime backed debt instruments would not be severe enough to challenge the large capital reserves held by the triple-A bond insurers. However, in the past month, Fitch, along with Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, have announced internal studies of the balance sheets of the market’s bond insurers. On Dec. 12, Fitch placed the parent of XL Capital, Security Capital Assurance, on watch for possible downgrade below triple-A. Two days later, Moody’s issued a comprehensive analysis of the market’s financial guarantors, affirming bond insurers’ triple-A ratings, while putting XL Capital Insurance and FGIC on review for downgrade. Moody’s also changed the outlook for CIFG Guaranty, as well as MBIA, to negative from stable. Then, like a bombshell, Standard & Poor’s issued its report on Wednesday, sending ACA to below investment grade. The credit rating agency also said that 2,400 of the 3,000 credits insured by ACA would be rated CCC. Perhaps surprisingly, while the news did impact equities markets, it had little effect on the municipal market. Traders and portfolio managers said the market had already priced in ACA’s situation, along with the other insurance companies somewhat tenuous financial position. “For ACA you have to break it down to the underlying project and nothing else matters,” said Troy Willis, portfolio manager at OppenheimerFunds in Rochester, N.Y. “For the other insurers, they are definitely still worth something, you aren’t just looking at the underlying project.”Willis went on. “There is a market sentiment that the triple-A insurers are going to do what they have to do to keep that rating, they are going to get the injection of capital for the most part,” he added. As for why the difference in action between equities and munis, one portfolio manager put it this way. “Stock holders of a bond insurance company have completely different interests than I do,” he said. “I am holding their triple-A rating, that is what I look at and I don’t think that is going to change, whereas a stock holder probably is not holding on to the stock for as long as I am holding onto the bond, so they are going to sell it off.” As the picture gets more clouded, one area of the market that may feel the effects most acutely is in the municipal auction rate market. Such bonds typically reset on a weekly or monthly basis, and big news can sometimes move the resets dramatically. “If you go back a few months to when Radian was downgraded by Fitch, there was huge fall-out on the Radian auction-rate bonds that were outstanding to the point that a lot of those issues have been wrapped by letters of credit over Radian,” said Don Carlson, vice chairman and senior managing director at B.C. Ziegler & Co. However, it is still unclear how the market would respond if one of the credit rating agencies issued a downgrade that was not followed by the others. In other words, how would the market value a split rating? For Security Capital Assurance that could soon be a reality. In issuing their ratings review, Fitch and Standard & Poor’s have varied widely in the amount of capital they say SCA must raise to adequately cover the triple-A rating of XL Capital. Fitch said the company would need to raise $2 billion, while Standard & Poor’s on Wednesday said it was closer to $250 million. “One thing I’m trying to come to grips with is what happens if we get split ratings,” Morningstar’s Ryan said. “It appears that Fitch is taking a harder line on SCA than Standard and Poor’s or Moody’s. If we start getting split ratings I’m not sure where that leaves us.”

As the Securities and Exchange Commission and other municipal bond industry organizations look to improve disclosure in the muni market, one small company is making strides with a step in this process — intraday bond pricing. Andrew Kalotay & Associates began work on a program to do this after an new client approached them in December of last year. Van Eck Global Securities was interested in creating a municipal bond exchange-traded fund and needed pricing throughout the day to do this. After months and many meetings, Interactive Data Corp. and the SEC have put the program in motion. It started running live in September, but there are still some flaws that need to be hammered out.“The difficulty today is that there is no live benchmark for municipal bonds,” said Andrew Kalotay, president of the company. “So we look at historical relationships between the muni yield curve and the end-of-day pricing of Interactive Data, and then we look at price movements throughout the day of the London Interbank Offered Rate swap curve.”Throughout the day, Kalotay’s software takes Interactive Data’s end-of-day price the prior trading session and then prices thousands of bonds every 15 seconds based on Libor movement. The data is simultaneously sent to Interactive Data and is packaged into baskets for municipal bond ETFs. All four companies offering ETFs — Van Eck, State Street Global Advisors, Powershares Capital Management LLC, and Barclays Global Investors — use the same software and Interactive Data’s programs in pricing their ETFs.“It is pretty revolutionary for the municipal market and the feedback to date has been very positive,” said Liz Duggan, vice president at Interactive Data. “It is a new concept out there and the service is expanding in the number of funds, the ETF sponsors, and we are going outside munis into using the service for Treasury bonds, corporate bonds, and preferred securities.”Historical data provided by Kalotay shows a very close correlation with Interactive Data’s end-of-day pricing. As he explained, the only way to back-test his software was by comparing their own end-of-day theoretical pricing to that of Interactive Data’s end-of-day price back in time. In 2006, tracking 10,875 different securities, the percentage of difference between Kalotay’s and Interactive Data’s end price was an average difference of $0.0022. Standard deviation was $0.1217. Over 90% of all prices inputted were within 0.10% of the price Interactive Data submitted.From January to August of 2007, the results are similar, but a little further off. In tracking the prices of 16,000 bonds, the average price difference was $0.0022, but the standard deviation grew to $0.2342. This was because of market conditions in August.Market volatility since beginning in August has exposed one flaw in the system. The pricing service is based throughout the day on a taxable curve. In August, November, and parts of December, the municipal bond market deviated from the taxable markets.“The muni market has moved in other directions from Libor,” Kalotay said. “Obviously, our software does not know this, so our program takes the taxable curve and comes up with a surrogate tax-exempt curve, and in some cases we end up with prices that are not accurate.”Thus, in the 2007 data, there are outliers that did not exist in 2006 that affected the standard deviation of the back-testing.To address this problem, Kalotay has been meeting with Municipal Market Advisors to “add color to our system,” as Kalotay puts it.In meetings over recent weeks with MMA, a company that provides market analysis and investment strategies, the two have found a way to work together.Tom Doe, president of MMA, sees Kalotay’s software as an excellent way to provide more transparent and accurate data to the ever-growing derivative segment of the muni market, and in turn, Kalotay is looking for intraday, muni-specific data that Doe’s company provides.“We’ll provide the spreads on the pricing of deal in the primary, provide flows in the marketplace throughout the day where there is heavy selling and where there is strength or not, and how that impacts the curve,” Doe said. “He has an incredible technology, or quantitative power, that allows him to do creative things and using our information will allow him to portray the changes in the muni market throughout the day.”In turn, Doe sees the benefit of a better live muni yield curve for the municipal derivatives market. He noted that in producing an options-free yield curve, as options are used heavily on the taxable side and distort a translation to the tax-exempt side, many big institutions doing business in the rate-lock market will benefit dramatically.“We’ve had conversations with some major dealers in the rate-lock market and during the market turbulence this fall, there were some problems with settlements because the prices were all over the place using traditional methods of providing a rate-lock, so with Kalotay’s data we can really create a premium, 5% coupon yield curve that is more accurate.”In a rate-lock agreement, a fund will sign a contract with another party — typically an established bank — that agrees to a future yield level on a certain maturity in a given amount of time. Once the time has elapsed, the contract must be settled, with one party paying the difference of actual yields at that time and what the agreed upon rate lock was. Thomson Financial’s Municipal Market Data yield curves and Lehman Brothers Municipal Index Swap curve are currently used for this.While these new developments are under way, users of the service appear to be satisfied in the meantime.“I’ve been very pleased with how everything on the ETF side of things has gone from the standpoint of the intraday price, the bid/ask spreads, and how we’ve been fairly tight form the standpoint of premiums and discounts,” said Tim Ryan, who manages State Street’s municipal bond ETFs. “Even during a very challenging time that we’ve been faced with, things are functioning fine. The pricing services are in a state of transition right now and we are entering a brave new world, but our products are trading efficiently.”Ryan also noted that State Street’s national muni bond ETF, ticker symbol TFI, has grown since its inception. It was seeded with $22 million and now has roughly $70 million of assets. It also has the highest three-month average of daily trading volume with 47,196 shares. Duggan also noted that interest in the intraday pricing has sparked abroad, as several European companies are in discussion with Interactive Data to use the system. When asked how and when Kalotay would be able to include MMA information and become less dependent on Libor, Kalotaysaid he would have a better idea next month.

The Bond Buyer’s weekly yield indexes declined this week, as losses Wednesday and yesterday failed to wipe out early gains. “We had a streak of winning days, but the music stopped Wednesday,” said Fred Yosca, managing director and head of trading at BNY Capital Markets. “I think the cessation of the uptrade was caused by insurance concerns. There could be a big change in the muni landscape, where it begins to return to the way it was before everything was insured, where people were looking at underlying ratings.”The municipal market was largely unchanged Friday, heading into the weekend. On Monday, tax-exempt yields were lower by one or two basis points, following the Treasury market. The market was again firmer by about one or two basis points Tuesday, a day which was headlined by the failure of Pennsylvania’s $706 million competitive bond sale, due to technical problems with Grant Street Group’s MuniAuction electronic bidding system. The commonwealth has since rescheduled its sale for next Thursday, and will be switching to Ipreo’s Parity.On Wednesday, weakness entered the market for the first time this week, as munis ended the session mixed overall, with gains on the short end, but some losses on the long end. Also Wednesday, the week’s largest deals came to market. The Alabama Public School and College Authority competitively sold $1.1 billion of capital improvement bonds to Lehman Brothers. Lehman priced $745 million of bonds for the Puerto Rico Public Buildings Authority, and Siebert, Brandford Shank & Co. priced $527 million of debt for Connecticut.Yesterday, tax-exempts were slightly weaker, with yields up about two basis points.The Bond Buyer 20-bond index of GO yields fell one basis point this week to 4.38%, its lowest level since Oct. 25, when it was 4.33%.The 11-bond index also dropped one basis point to 4.31%, its lowest level since Oct. 25, when it was 4.27%. The revenue bond index fell three basis points to 4.74%, the lowest level since Nov. 1 when it was 4.73%.The 10-year Treasury note, however, rose seven basis points to 4.02%, but remained below the 4.09% it registered two weeks ago.The 30-year Treasury bond rose 14 basis points to 4.49%, but remained below the 4.50% it registered two weeks ago.The Bond Buyer one-year note index fell 24 basis points to 3.04%, its lowest level in more than two years, since when it was 3.02% on Nov. 2, 2005.The weekly average yield to maturity on The Bond Buyer 40-bond municipal bond index finished at 4.79%, down one basis point from last week’s 4.80%.

Van Eck Global launched its first of several planned municipal bond exchange-traded funds yesterday that will track an index provided by Lehman Brothers. The Market Vectors Lehman Brothers AMT-Free Intermediate Municipal Index ETF will track an index that is composed of investment grade bonds with maturities between six and 17 years. “This is an exciting day for Van Eck as we are ringing the bell at the American Stock Exchange, but it took a lot of work to get to this point,” said James Colby, senior municipal strategist for Van Eck in a meeting yesterday morning at the exchange. “For a long time the municipal market has been in the back pages of market efficiency but now we are bringing it into the world of efficient electronic trading that is accessible to both the individual and the institution.” This ETF has an expense ratio of 0.20% with dividends paid monthly. It opened yesterday at $104.04 and closed at $104.05 with a trading volume of 200 shares. Barclays Global Investors iShares, State Street Global Advisors SPDR and PowerShares Capital Management LLC have also launched muni ETFs. Van Eck intends to launch five other ETFs shortly that will track the municipal market in the short-term, between one and six years maturity, the long-term market that will track maturities of 17 years and up, a New York-specific and California-specific ETF as well as a high-yield ETF. A spokesperson for the company said it expects to launch one more of the additional muni ETFs before the end of January. The company also has four more state-specific ETFs is registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission that will track debt from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey ,and Ohio. “It is extremely important to have a full family of funds that people can pick from,” said Harvey Hirsch, senior vice president at Van Eck. “The ability to one-stop shop and get all what you want from this asset class is what you will get with our family of funds.” Specifically, the intermediate ETF that is now trading under the ticker symbol ITM will track the Lehman Brothers AMT-Free Intermediate Continuous Municipal Index. To be included in the index, bonds must be rated by two of the major rating agencies. The threshold rating is Baa3 by Moody’s Investors Service or BBB-minus by Standard & Poor’s or Fitch Ratings. Bonds must have an outstanding par value of at least $7 million and be issued as part of a transaction of at least $75 million. They must be issued in the last five years.

Asset levels in municipal money market funds have reached record levels for the last nine consecutive weeks, as the funds experienced inflows of $5.69 billion for the week ending Dec. 3. The increase in assets has accelerated after a slow finish in September and puts total assets in tax-free money market funds at $462.48 billion, according to the Money Fund Report. The report monitors 549 funds. Average seven-day yields over the same period were 3.06%, up two basis points from the week before and up 15 basis points from mid-November. The average maturity is 31 days, the same maturity when compared to the week that ended Nov. 26. This week’s data continues the trend set during the previous week but at a faster pace. Last week, tax-free money funds had inflows of just over $3 billion. Taxable funds had inflows of $41.68 billion, putting total net assets at $2.620 trillion, also a record level. The combined total is $3.082 trillion of assets under management.

Municipal bond mutual fund flows continued to increase in October, the second straight month of inflows, according to an Investment Company Institute report released last week.

While still on pace for a record year of primary market volume, municipal bond issuers slowed way down in November, selling only 770 deals totaling $25.113 billion. That’s the least of any month this year and well below 1,287 issues totaling $42.671 billion sold last November, according to preliminary monthly volume data from Thomson Financial. The 41.1% drop in total volume in November compared to last year as issuers scaled back — or postponed — their debt sales largely in response to fears over general market volatility and widening credit spreads, and doubts over the credit strength and stability of triple-A bond insurers, market analysts said. The slow November followed a record October, which saw $43.4 billion of new issuance, and ended up beating the previous all-time high record for the month — $42.4 billion set in 2002. The year-over-year drop this month is magnified because last November had the highest volume on record over the past 10 years.November market volatility led to several high-profile deals to be put on hold. Chicago delayed its $961 million new money and refunding deal for O’Hare International Airport and Miami-Dade County postponed its $539 million refunding deal for its airport. Both deals remain on the day-to-day calendar.

Competitive offerings from Alabama and Pennsylvania lead the way in the primary new-issue market this week, comprising $1.8 billion of the roughly $10.1 billion of bonds and notes scheduled for sale. The estimate is 34% higher than the $7.5 billion of paper priced in the new-issue market last week, and mark the largest scheduled calendar in more than a month, since $15.8 billion of debt was brought to market the week of Oct. 22.“It is a little unusual in terms of size, but a lot of issuers are trying to get their last deals out before the end of the year,” said Jeffrey Timlin, portfolio manager and vice president at Sage Advisory Services. “Activity generally slows down during Thanksgiving, picks up a little bit for the first two weeks of December, and then the seasonality effect of Christmas takes hold, where you see a slowdown going into the end of the year, with people doing some final re-balancing going into year-end.”“Even though the size of the calendar this week might be unusual, you are still seeing year-to-date issuance at an all-time high,” Timlin said. “On top of that, you are seeing rates back to where we were back in 2003. You’re seeing a lot of issuers coming to market with a lot of debt that has been pending for a while, looking for attractive interest rate levels. We’re now finally in a market where it makes sense to pay for some of these [market] liabilities.”In the week’s largest scheduled offering, the Alabama Public School and College Authority Wednesday will competitively sell about $1.1 billion of capital improvement bonds. The deal represents both the bond market’s largest competitive tax-exempt new money offering of 2007, and the largest debt sale ever by an Alabama state agency.The bonds are slated to mature from 2008 through 2027, and are rated Aa2 by Moody’s Investors Service and AA by Standard & Poor’s. Insurance will be available at the bidder’s option.“We are extremely excited about the opportunity to have this billion dollar sale next week,” said James Main, the state’s finance director. “It will upgrade facilities and educational opportunities in Alabama to the extent never before dreamed of.”Proceeds from the sale will provide funds for construction and repairs to city and county K-12 school systems, along with public two- and four-year colleges.Public FA Inc. is financial adviser. Bradley Arant Rose & White LLP is bond counsel.The Alabama Public School and College Authority last competitively sold capital improvement bonds in March 2006. Banc of America Securities LLC won that $52.5 million deal, with a true interest cost of 4.23%. The bonds mature from 2007 through 2026, with yields ranging from 3.48% with a 4% coupon in 2008 to 4.42% with a 4.25% coupon in 2026. Bonds maturing in 2007, and from 2020 through 2024 were not formally re-offered. The bulk of the deal came to market uninsured, though bonds maturing in 2018, 2025, and 2026 were backed by MBIA Insurance Corp.Among 5% coupon paper in the deal, all bonds were priced 10 basis points over that day’s Municipal Market Data triple-A yield curve.Pennsylvania will competitively sell $706 million of new-money and refunding general obligation bonds tomorrow in three series. Bonds from the first series — $565 million of Series A new-money GOs — mature from 2008 through 2027. Bonds from the second series — $23 million of Series B new-money GOs — also mature from 2008 through 2027. Bonds from the third series —$118.1 million of GO refunding bonds — mature from 2008 through 2011.Pennsylvania’s credit is rated Aa2 by Moody’s, and AA by both Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings.“Pennsylvania paper is traditionally priced well in the market and we would hope to see anywhere from five to seven bidding syndicates, so we would expect to be well received in the market,” said Rick Dreher, director of the Bureau of Revenue Cash Flow and Debt in the commonwealth’s budget office.Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, LLC is bond counsel. Public Financial Management Inc. is financial adviser.The commonwealth last competitively sold GOs in May in two series. Merrill Lynch & Co. won that $373 million deal, with a TIC of 4.28%. Bonds from the larger $346 million series mature from 2008 through 2027, with yields ranging from 3.75% in 2010 to 4.06% in 2020, all with 5% coupons. All remaining bonds were not formally re-offered. Bonds from the smaller $27 million series mature from 2008 through 2027, and were all not formally re-offered. Bonds from the larger series were uninsured, while bonds from the smaller series were insured by CIFG Assurance NA.Among 5% coupon paper in the deal, bonds maturing from 2014 through 2020 were tightest to that day’s MMD triple-A yield curve, with bonds eight basis points over the curve. Bonds maturing from 2010 through 2013 were widest to the scale, with yields nine basis points over.In other activity, Siebert Brandford Shank & Co. Wednesday will price $535 million of GOs for Connecticut, following a retail order period today and tomorrow. The bonds will be priced in three series — $300 million of new-money GOs, $188.7 of GO refunding bonds, and $46 million of taxable GO bonds.Moody’s rates the debt Aa3, while both Standard & Poor’s and Fitch rate it AA.Levy & Droney PC, Lewis & Munday, Nixon Peabody LLP, Pullman & Comley LLC, Robinson & Cole LLP, and Shipman & Goodwin LLP are bond counsel. P.G. Corbin & Co. and Acacia Financial Group Inc. are co-financial advisers for the deal. Merrill Lynch tomorrow will price $479 million of commercial paper for the New York City Municipal Water Finance Authority, following a retail order period today. The credit is rated Aa2 by Moody’s, AA-plus by Standard & Poor’s, and AA by Fitch. “This is a high-quality issuer, so we hope that we will have a good reception,” said Robert Lamb, president of Lamont Financial Services Corp., one of the issuer’s financial advisers. “This is a frequent issuer and it’s a reasonable size issue, so we are hoping it will get a good reception.”“Our view is that we are coming with a very strong AA credit to which we would expect investors to respond to given the market environment,” added Patrick McCoy, MWFA’s executive director.Lamont Financial Services and Ramirez & Co. are financial advisers. Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP is bond counsel.