Munis

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board is requesting comment on requiring more written disclosure from solicitor municipal advisors, which make up just 19% of all MA firms.

Planning will require favorable tax policies, sophisticated capital programing, bond financing, and pioneering public-private partnerships. It also requires a cohesive national, bipartisan infrastructure plan as a foundation to begin addressing this impending infrastructure crisis.

Although all of the proposals have some bipartisan support in Congress, the extent of that support remains unclear.

Bank holdings of municipal bonds increased by 9% in 2020 compared to 2019, according to a new Federal Reserve report.

The next phase of pension risk analysis will be different and more challenging: Assessing the long-term impacts of individual jurisdictions’ choices in the context of their unique workforce demographics, benefits and salary structure, and pension funding status.

The pandemic has caused some special circumstances for state and local governments in juggling their finances. Jeffrey Previdi, the vice-chairman of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board who spent more than 20 years of his career at S&P Global Ratings, talks about what his regulatory organization has done to assist them. Previdi also talked about how GASB influences how state and local governments spend taxpayer money on such things as schools, firehouses, water treatment plants, and other infrastructure. Brian Tumulty hosts. (25 minutes)

Fitch Ratings downgraded Anaheim's bonds on Friday, as the governor announced amusement parks and stadiums could open April 1.

Far West municipal issuers sold $99.1 billion of debt last year, a 16% increase from 2019, picking up the pace in the second quarter after a hiccup in March when the coronavirus first put society on pause.

Hector Negroni, a leader in pushing the needle in municipal finance, talks policy, infrastructure, ESG and a growing global audience for investing in state and local governments.

Far West municipal issuers sold $99.1 billion of debt last year, a 16% increase from 2019.

Municipal bond issuers in the Southeast sold $76.91 billion of bonds in 1,152 issues in 2020, putting volume slightly ahead of 2019, according to Refinitiv data.

Trade volume increased by just 4% compared to 2019 following a volatile year for munis.

Municipal issuers in the Southeast sold $76.9 billion of bonds in 2020; $3.5 billion for Florida's Hurricane Catastrophe Fund was the region's biggest deal.

Reinstating certain municipal bond provisions would make way for more infrastructure investment.

Refunding volume swelled in the Midwest by 53% in 2020, driving bond issuance in the Midwest to a 15.8% year-over-year increase, to more than $83.5 billion.

From the use of taxables to forward deliveries, refunding deals drove an overall 15.8% hike in Midwest bond volume that exceeded the national average.

Municipal bond issuers in the Southwest, despite the pandemic — or perhaps in part because of the conditions it created — set a record for annual issuance.

Northeast municipal issuers sold $129.99 billion of debt in 2020 amid the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Municipal issuers in the Southwest sold $93.5 billion of debt in 2020, a year in which the coronavirus upended the way bond business is done.

While issuance fell significantly from 2020, it was higher than January's and only the fifth time in 35 years that volume exceeded $30 billion in February.