WASHINGTON — Kym Arnone, the current chair of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, has left Barclays Capital, according to a company spokesperson.
Arnone was the managing director and head of municipal securitization initiatives with Barclays, where she specialized in tobacco bonds and New York City debt.
The Barclays spokesperson didn't give a reason for Arnone's departure or indicate whether she'd been hired by another company. Investment banking sources said there's speculation she's talking to several Wall Street banks.
Arnone's office said Friday that she is on vacation.
Arnone will retain her position as MSRB chair until her one-year term ends Sept. 30, MSRB communications manager Leah Szarek said Friday. She has been a board member since 2012.
Arnone worked for Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers before moving to Barclays when the bank acquired Lehman Brothers. She is recognized as leading almost $40 billion in tobacco bond deals, financings that are secured by annual payments tobacco companies have pledged to states as compensation for the negative health effects of smoking. The payments are the result of a settlement between tobacco companies and states in 1998 that established the annual payments.
Such deals have spelled trouble for some governments recently as tobacco company revenue has decreased along with the number of people smoking. Governments that pursued capital appreciation bond deals, where payment is put off until the bonds mature, have found that the steeper repayment terms have led to ballooning obligations that cannot be paid off early because of the shrinking tobacco revenue.
Arnone worked with the state of New Jersey to restructure two CAB tobacco bonds in 2014.
Last year she also won the Northeast Women in Public Finance's Freda Johnson Award, which is given to women who are serving or who have served in a position for a public or non-profit issuer who show qualities of being a trail blazer, leader, innovator, and mentor in the industry.
