Markets

Chicago put its message on fiscal progress directly to bondholders at the annual investors conference last week.

Borrower Jasper Pellets and trustee US Bank have been locked in a legal battle after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 27.

It was a busy day in the primary Tuesday, with New York City pricing $950 million of GOs for retail and Miami-Dade County, Florida, and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, selling in the competitive market.

The finance team on the Western Placer Waste Management Authority deal hopes to benefit from an improving market with increased inflows.

The city takes competitive bids Wednesday on $124 million of GOs.

Ramirez & Co. and Cabrera Capital Markets, LLC — two Hispanic MWBE firms — are joint bookrunners for the deal, part of Dallas County's sustained push to "maximize professional diversity on the issuance," officials said.

"Demand for low-duration tax-exempts has been so strong that short maturity benchmark yields are now lower than the after-tax yields for comparably rated benchmark taxable muni and corporate bonds," said CreditSights strategists Pat Luby and John Ceffalio.

Funding transit infrastructure is one of the county's key initiatives and also reinforces its policy to reduce carbon emissions, increase mobility equity and promote transit-oriented development, says Fitch's Michael Rinaldi.

Spreads on underwriting municipal bonds dipped to below $4 per $1,000 on issues in the first half of 2022 due to heavy competition and a shrinking volume of deals — the lowest figures reported in two decades.

New-issue volume grows to $10.7 billion led by a $2.7 billion taxable Massachusetts ESG deal, $1.35 billion of Oklahoma natural gas taxables, $1.25 billion from the Regents of the University of California and $1.1 billion from New York City.