Buy side

Frank Chin, co-head of public finance at Citi, is a 35-year muni bond veteran who worked in a period of dramatic change that has shaped the aviation and muni bond industries.

A $300 million Illinois revenue offering will lead the activity in the primary market this week as part of an estimated $4.97 billion in new volume, which is on the lighter side compared due to the absence of large, billion-dollar deals that have dominated the calendar in recent weeks.

For buyers, the allure of attractive yields, diversification, and liquidity drowned out the project risks tied to investing in the Iowa Fertilizer Co.'s $1.2 billion of junk-bond paper.

Speakers at the National Federation of Municipal Analysts on Thursday discussed warning signs that risk is stratospheric on high risk capital-intensive projects like fertilizer, desalination and ethanol plants.

Highmark Inc., which closed on a $604 million deal to take over teetering West Penn Allegheny Health System, is now under rating agency glare.

The U.S. faces several significant challenges in the water and wastewater sectors including aging infrastructure, a water supply-demand imbalance and an unsustainable funding gap, a new Ernst and Young report found.

Tax season has come and gone, yet the run of outflows from municipal bond mutual funds dragged into its ninth straight week, at $391 million.

All The Bond Buyer's weekly yield indexes declined the week ended May 2.

Six months after announcing a proposed merger, Trinity Health and Catholic Health East said Thursday they've closed the deal, which will create the second-largest health care provider in the country.

The municipal bond market is rife with investment opportunities, thanks to fourth quarter growth in state tax revenue, U.S. Trust says.

Seasonal outflows continued for tax-exempt money market funds as $4.49 billion escaped the industry and total net assets settled at $259.42 billion in the week ended April 29, according to The Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

Modest action in the municipal secondary market, particularly out in longer maturities, is propelling an otherwise quiet session.

The largest trend facing the municipal world right now is efforts on multiple fronts to become more transparent, according to speakers at a Wednesday panel at the National Federation of Municipal Analyst's annual conference.

The municipal market started slowly out of the gates Thursday morning as traders reported modest activity in taxable paper in the secondary.

Moody's Analytics, a subsidiary of Moody's Corporation, launched a new CreditView service for the public finance sector.

Long-term municipal bond issuance fell slightly for the month of April, yet still clings to a small increase for the year.

LOS ANGELES - Standard & Poor’s attributes much of the above-average creditworthiness of U.S. state governments to the unique countercyclical economic and fiscal support that the federal government offers the states, while warning that such support may be waning.

With tax season having passed, muni industry watchers anticipate the outflows to fade soon and interest beyond the front end of the yield curve to rise.

A $1.2 billion Iowa financing will headline the primary market activity this week as part of an overall projected volume of almost $5.8 billion, but could face challenges after a Texas fertilizer explosion two weeks ago and mixed reaction to economic news on Friday.

The tax-exempt market struggled to gain momentum all week as a limited primary calendar and uncertainty over the direction of interest rates in the secondary market kept buyers at bay.