Law and regulation

Middle-market securities dealers need to redouble efforts to make their voices heard as regulators prepare to tighten the reins on the muni market, Bond Dealers of America members said.

Rebecca Olsen, deputy director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s office of municipal securities, has concerns about municipal advisor misconceptions she has heard about who can advise in the municipal market and who can be considered an independent registered municipal advisor.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Municipal Securities is weighing whether to provide legal interpretive guidance to help municipal advisors determine if they are acting as an adviser or broker-dealer when working with an issuer on a bank loan.

Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi, D-P.R., has introduced a bill that would authorize the Treasury Department to guarantee future bonds issued by Puerto Rico and its authorities if it finds they have meaningfully improved the management of their finances.

Nat Singer recently compared chairing the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board to running “a relay race.” He said his leg of the race is to work with the board to move forward with rules such as those on municipal advisor core conduct and dealer disclosure of markups on principal trades and then hand the work off to the next chairman and board.

At least three major Wall Street firms have not settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission under its Municipalities Continuing Disclosure Cooperation initiative, noted some lawyers who were involved with a National Association of Bond Lawyers survey on the impact of MCDC.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board is asking for industry feedback on a proposal to make board members more effective by changing the length of their terms to four years instead of three.

Utah Treasurer Richard Ellis has been tapped to serve a second three-year term as a public member of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board.

The Securities and Exchange Commission ordered 22 municipal securities underwriting firms to pay $4.12 million in civil penalties in the second round of what some lawyers said on Wednesday will be three total rounds of underwriter settlements under the commission’s Municipalities Continuing Disclosure Cooperation initiative.

UBS Financial Services of Puerto Rico agreed to pay $34 million to settle charges by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and Securities and Exchange Commission that it failed to supervise the suitability of transactions in Puerto Rican closed-end fund shares, as well as a former broker who had customers invest in those CEFs using money borrowed from an affiliated bank.

A bond investor’s suspicions triggered a municipal bond trustee’s firing of a vice president but the question remains: what happened to more than $2 million?

In muni underwriting understanding who is obligated to make required disclosures and the content and timing of required disclosures are critically important.

Rep. Nydia Velázquez wants to extend protections under the Investment Company Act of 1940 to Puerto Rico, saying their absence caused Puerto Ricans to suffer losses when they invested in mutual funds heavily stocked with the financially struggling commonwealth’s bonds.

Dealers acting as principals would have to disclose markups and markdowns in transactions with retail customers under rule changes proposed by the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed to update its rules for administrative proceedings to provide more flexibility to parties and improve the availability of documents to the public.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s five members unanimously agreed on Tuesday to propose a rule and amendments that would require open-end mutual funds and exchange traded funds to take steps to manage liquidity risks so they could handle redemptions during periods of financial stress.

The National Association of Bond Lawyers is calling for increased education of issuers on continuing disclosure in the wake of lessons learned from the Municipalities Continuing Disclosure Cooperation initiative.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s pending fee changes will be unfair and excessively burdensome, dealer and advisor groups told the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Former Internal Revenue Service director Mark Scott is urging the IRS to revoke a private-letter ruling that was favorable for a total return swap, arguing that TRS’ are “[arbitrage scheme[s]” that have “resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal tax benefits being stolen.”

While the issue price rules proposed by the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service in June are a “significant improvement” over those proposed in 2013, the alternative method for determining issue price under the recent proposal is currently “not workable,” the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association wrote.