Law and regulation

Municipal issuers back the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's proposal to require dealers to discontinue temporarily masking the exact par value of large muni bond trades on EMMA, while dealer and institutional investor groups oppose it.

To make more new-issue data available, the MSRB filed a proposed rule change to prohibit dealers from reporting "NRO" unless they also report price and yield information.

In response to a G-17 interpretive notice that takes effect August 2, a SIFMA task force will release a series of documents underwriters can reference as they prepare disclosures to issuers.

Government attorneys released snippets of taped conversations Monday in which UBS bankers and others use phrases like "baking in Chambers" and "the market," language prosecutors say helped them conspire to set bid prices and determine which firms would win contracts.

New Rule G-43 requires that broker's brokers make reasonable efforts to obtain fair and reasonable prices when conducting secondary-market "bid-wanted" auctions.

While the Governmental Accounting Standards Board's new accounting standards announced Monday will improve financial reporting for public pension plans they also will put added pressure on cash-strapped state and local governments to reform their systems.

Mary Schapiro, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, laid out a case for additional money market reforms before the Senate Banking Committee Thursday.

Additional regulation of money-market mutual funds could increase short-term borrowing costs for state and local governments, leading municipalities to raise taxes or cut spending on infrastructure and other critical projects, according to a paper released Monday by a Georgetown University professor.

The Internal Revenue Service has closed an audit without changing the tax-exempt status of $219.22 million of bonds that were issued by the curators of the University of Missouri in 2006.

FINRA will soon begin examining underwriters of municipal bonds to see if they can show they have carried out disclosure due-diligence obligations like those in a risk alert the SEC issued in March, a senior official said.

CHICAGO — Bond lawyers are beginning to require that underwriters sit down with members of the issuer’s finance team to discuss how they determined the issue price for the bonds, an IRS official said at a seminar held here on Wednesday.

As GASB prepares to vote on new standards for public pension fund accounting that would shed light on unfunded liabilities, a recently formed state and local task force is developing guidance to keep governments focused on their annual required contributions.

CHICAGO — Ongoing turmoil in financial markets and historically low interest rates have led institutional investors to increase scrutiny of issuers’ disclosure documents, an insurance company investment officer said at the Government Finance Officers Association annual meeting.

The IRS will begin limited-scope examinations of bond anticipation notes in July and then examinations of filed 8038-T forms on arbitrage rebate, an IRS official said.

WASHINGTON — Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus said Monday that he plans to meet with committee members this week to discuss extending expired and expiring tax provisions “without any games.”