Law and regulation

As the new chair of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board on Oct. 1, Colleen Woodell hopes the board will begin new initiatives on syndicate practices and pre-trade price transparency during her one-year term.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has voted to propose an amendment to one of its rules that would shorten the standard settlement cycle for most bond and other securities transactions to two instead of three days after the trade date.

The National Federation of Municipal Analysts is urging charter schools to provide detailed financial, academic, and staffing information in primary and secondary disclosure documents.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board proposed on Tuesday to create a standalone minimum denomination rule that would revise current and proposed requirements because of dealer complaints.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board has improved its EMMA system to make it easier for issuers to disclose bank loans and other alternative financings after state and local officials complained the process was too confusing and seemed to lose some of these disclosures.

Former state and local officials on a House Financial Services Committee panel raised concerns Thursday about the lack of transparency of fees in municipal bond deals and the tendency by dealers to push for more negotiated than competitive bond transactions.

Dealers are struggling with how to comply with the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s proposed markup disclosure requirements and whether they can create computer programs or rely on pricing services for compliance.

Municipal market participants at The Bond Buyer's California Public Finance Conference shared concrete examples of how disclosure is improving in the wake of the Securities and Exchange Commission's continuing disclosure voluntary enforcement initiative.

About 680 firms, with 4,500 associated professionals, were registered as municipal advisors as of September, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s chairman told House and Senate committee leaders in a letter detailing the board’s compliance with the Dodd-Frank Act.

Stark Municipal Brokers and Performance Trust Capital Partners have agreed to pay a combined $25,000 over reporting violations uncovered by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and a former chief executive officer of an Atlanta-based securities company has agreed to be barred from the market in a FINRA action that involves alleged securities fraud.

Money market mutual funds’ holdings of municipal bonds fell by nearly $42 billion dollars between the second quarter of this year and the same period last year, a change that is partially the result of soon-to-become-effective rule changes from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The securities fraud jury verdict against the city of Miami and its former budget director Michael Boudreaux on Wednesday will likely embolden the Securities and Exchange Commission to litigate rather than settle cases against issuers and their officials, lawyers said on Thursday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved proposed rule changes from the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board that would authorize the board to provide three-year old trade data for academic studies that would identify dealers in some way without naming them.

In a first-of-a-kind verdict, a Miami jury found on Wednesday that Miami and its former budget director, Michael Boudreaux, were guilty of securities fraud for faulty disclosures in connection with three 2009 municipal bond offerings.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ordered UBS to pay $750,000 in damages to two Puerto Rico bondholders.

The House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday passed a bill by a vote of 30 to 26 that would divert the funding the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board gets from enforcement actions, remove the independence of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of Municipal Securities, and allow certain banks to be exempt from liquidity coverage ratio requirements.

California Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation requiring more bond disclosure from California issuers.

The orders provide some insight into what the Securities and Exchange Commission considers to be a material false or misleading statement in an offering document.

The Securities and Exchange Commission should consider obtaining registration and disclosure authority over corporate conduit borrowers in the municipal market, said SEC Commissioner Michael Piwowar.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday announced that a subsidiary of BOK Financial Corp. that served as indenture trustee and dissemination agent for municipal conduit bonds previously tied to securities fraud has agreed to pay more than $1.6 million to settle charges that it helped to conceal numerous problems and red flags from investors in the securities.