Washington

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.

Amid a federal corruption probe, Opa-locka, Fla.'s former manager, David Chiverton pleaded guilty to taking pay-offs as a state financial oversight panel attempts to prevent the city from having to file for bankruptcy.

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.