Washington

Municipal advisors want the MSRB to take more time to consider how its proposed continuing education requirements for advisors would fit into the existing MA regulatory structure as well as provide details about how firms can best comply.

The Iowa Fertilizer Co. LLC’s construction and cash flow troubles led Fitch Ratings to downgrade deeper into junk almost $1.2 billion of project bonds that are now under an Internal Revenue Service cloud.

The median audit reporting time for all municipal bond-related sectors in fiscal year 2015 was the highest it has been since 2008, likely because of recent pension reporting rules.

Dealers are unhappy the Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s proposal to require them to disclose their markups and markdowns to retail customers in certain transactions.

A banker who serves on issuer charitable groups and donates to them raises conflict of interest questions.

Securities and Exchange Commission chair Mary Jo White said in a speech on Friday that the municipal securities market is an example of an area where the commission has brought to bear its “bolder and more unrelenting approach to enforcement to change industry behavior.”

Rebecca Harrigal, the first female director of the Internal Revenue Service’s Office of Tax Exempt Bonds, will leave her post at the agency next month to join a law firm.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board announced on Thursday that starting on Feb. 27, academic institutions will be able to request one-year data sets from a new data product that would identify dealers in some way without naming them.

The city of Mobile, Ala., has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum of money to the Internal Revenue Service to maintain the tax-exempt standing of $63.4 million of general obligation refunding and improvement warrants it issued in 2006.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s whistleblower office fielded more allegations involving municipal securities and public pensions in fiscal year 2016 than ever before, according to a report the office sent to Congress about recent whistleblower activity.