Nearly four decades ago, Richard Ciccarone warned that municipal investors could be asked to hold bonds for years with little new financial information beyond what an issuer provided at the time of sale. He spent the decades that followed not only pressing issuers to provide more, but expanding what analysts could do with the information once they had it.
His refusal to accept the available information as sufficient has run through Ciccarone's career, from his first municipal analyst position at Chicago's Harris Bank in 1977 to his current role as president emeritus at Merritt Research Services. His work to strengthen disclosure, build better research tools and broaden the information analysts use to assess risk will be recognized with his induction into The Bond Buyer Muni Hall of Fame Class of 2026.
Ray Kljajic, a former muni investment banker who is now managing director at American Public Infrastructure, said Ciccarone was at the forefront of the push for stronger disclosure while pioneering the use of independent data with the development of what became Merritt Research Services.
"Rich and I have known each other for nearly 50 years, dating back to a time when municipal credit was evolving in the wake of the New York City default and the financial crises affecting both Chicago and Chicago Public Schools," he said. "Unlike some who worked with the limited information available and did their best to write credit reports, Rich wanted more information, more facts and a broader perspective."
"One of my proudest points is to have been an eyewitness of the remarkable transformation of unique research over the decades," Ciccarone said. "It has become a significant or highly important role to be played out within the industry, and it's crucial for maintaining the integrity of the bonds to sell as well as buy."
Ciccarone's push for more information soon became an organized industry effort. In 1983, Ciccarone
"It was in my first year as the board chairman of the NFMA when we did the first resolutions that were ever done in order to pursue secondary market disclosure better, and actually governmental accounting standards board disclosures," he recalled. "And it's interesting because it was not something that the industry was used to."
In a 1987 column in The Wall Street Journal, Ciccarone bemoaned the lack of muni issuers' key financial data, noting an official statement could be the only information provided by an issuer over the life of a bond and warning of future federal regulation if the situation did not improve.
"It had a very big impact, not only in the public and among investors, but even among regulators," he said. "So it finally got their attention that the Journal was publishing it as a guest column, not as a letter to the editor, and that's where it started to take on legs of its own."
Getting issuers to provide more information solved only part of the problem. Analysts also needed better ways to collect, compare and use it.
Ciccarone was already working on that problem by 1985, when Van Kampen Merritt put him in charge of organizing and
His definition of useful credit information continued to expand beyond issuer financial statements.
In 1996, Ciccarone founded MuniNet Guide, which evolved into a website providing demographic data, employment information, research resources and commentary on issues affecting states, local governments and public agencies. It also featured analysis of distressed credits and municipal bankruptcy developments from 2023
Ciccarone continues to widen that analytical lens. Earlier this year, he released a framework for
"I know of no one in our industry who has had the passion, dedication and heart to serve more than Richard Ciccarone; and no one who has had a greater impact on the critical discipline of municipal credit research," former Investortools president Scott Bradley said in a statement nominating Ciccarone for the Hall of Fame.
His work has been recognized by several groups, including a lifetime achievement award from Smith's Research & Gradings in 2007, NFMA's career achievement award in 2011 and Smith's All-American Municipal Analyst Award in 1993.
Ciccarone has also spent decades sharing that research discipline with the industry, participating in meetings and conferences, giving his time to reporters and aspiring analysts, and emphasizing that better credit work is collaborative.
"Nothing I did was ever accomplished alone, and everybody was integral to those objectives of what did you want to accomplish," he said.
