Bankruptcy

The American Bar Association’s taxation section has sent the Treasury Department several suggestions it contends would simplify and make more flexible interim guidance for issuers, bondholders, and other market participants that want to strip the tax credits from tax-credit bonds.

FGIC Corp., the holding company of beleaguered bond insurer Financial Guaranty Insurance Co., announced Wednesday that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

WASHINGTON — The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board Wednesday filed ­changes with the Securities and Exchange Commission on a ­controversial proposal that would dictate the priority of retail and other customer orders in primary offerings, as well as dealers’ related record-keeping responsibilities.

BRADENTON, Fla. — Former Jefferson County commissioner Gary White has become the latest of nearly two dozen people and companies in Alabama convicted for corruption involving the county’s debt-clogged sewer system.

CHICAGO — All five southeastern Wisconsin school districts involved in a failed investment scheme tied to funding their non-pension retiree health care trusts are reneging on their moral obligation pledge to repay asset-backed notes issued by the trusts and sold to Depfa Bank Plc.

Outgoing Alabama Attorney General Troy King last week said he has asked a private law firm to begin preparations for suing BP and other firms responsible for the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department Tuesday indicted three former financial services executives — Dominick P. Carollo, Steven E. Goldberg and Peter S. Grimm — on a total of 12 criminal counts for allegedly participating in wire fraud schemes and conspiracies in connection with the bidding for investment contracts for municipal bond proceeds over a seven-year period.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department today indicted three former financial services executives — Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm — on 12 criminal counts for participating in wire fraud schemes and conspiracies in connection with the bidding for investment contracts for municipal bond proceeds from as early as 1999 until 2006.

WASHINGTON — The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board is wrestling with how much it needs to increase its staff, technological capability, and funds to implement provisions of the new financial regulatory reform law that require it to make the most expansive changes since its creation in 1975.

CHICAGO — CIFG Assurance North America Inc. on Monday sued Assured Guaranty Corp., charging it with breach of contract violations for reneging on its obligation to cover the policy on $83.3 million of Xenia Iowa Rural Water District bonds as part of its 19-month-old reinsurance agreement.

ALAMEDA, Calif. — Officials in Modoc County, Calif., scrambled to avoid insolvency last week after years of lax accounting put the government in a $12.5 million financial hole.

It will take five years to turn the new federal financial reform law into rules and regulation, an industry expert from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association said last week.

CHICAGO — Closing arguments are scheduled to begin Monday morning in the federal corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich after his defense rested its case last week without calling him to the stand.

The New York State Thruway Authority board last week authorized its executive director to negotiate but not execute on his own a new contract with Hawkins Delafield & Wood LLP, which has been bond counsel for the agency for all of its 60 years of existence.

WASHINGTON — At the request of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board is moving forward with rule changes for priority of orders in primary offerings. The changes are more in line with the original proposal the MSRB floated late last year rather than a pared-down version it agreed to in April.

WASHINGTON — The House ethics committee’s investigative panel is alleging that former Ways and Means Committee chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has violated ethics rules.

One of Vallejo’s employee unions is continuing its legal fight against the city’s rejection of its contract in bankruptcy court.

WASHINGTON — The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board is considering temporarily expanding its 15-member board, possibly by two to four members, as it transitions to majority-public membership by Oct. 1 to comply with the new financial regulatory reform law.

WASHINGTON — President Obama yesterday signed into law financial regulatory reform legislation that will make sweeping changes in the municipal and other markets, saying it will prevent a reoccurrence of the “breakdown” that caused the current “severe recession.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted unanimously Wednesday to propose new rules designed to revamp the sales and distribution fees some mutual funds charge and to provide better disclosures of them to investors.