Washington

Municipal industry experts on Thursday urged analysts to continue focusing on how the presence of statutory liens can change the treatment of debt in bankruptcy proceedings and ratings analyses.

The par amount and number of municipal securities trades rose in the first quarter of this year, compared to both the previous and same quarters last year, according to Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board statistics posted Thursday. But the number of continuing disclosure documents received dropped to 46,623 in the first quarter of this year from 47,934 during the same period last year.

A regulatory official and market participants sparred over the merits of the Securities and Exchange Commission's voluntary continuing disclosure enforcement initiative during a panel here on Wednesday while acknowledging the need to improve municipal disclosure.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board is opening an application window between May 3 and May 10 to allow more individuals associated with banks and broker-dealers to apply for a seat on next year’s board.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday approved Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board amendments to facilitate moving the municipal securities industry to a two- instead of three-day settlement cycle.

Dustin McDonald, the current director of the Government Finance Officers Association’s federal liaison center, is leaving GFOA on Friday to lead the marijuana technology company Weedmaps’ government relations practice.

A lawyer facing Securities and Exchange Commission charges that he violated federal securities laws as part of a pay-to-play scheme to secure Ohio pension business is arguing the commission’s charges cannot apply to him and should be dismissed.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board is making its trade data available through a research platform to individuals associated with more than 400 institutions around the world, but without the controversial anonymous dealer identifiers in a proposed new product still under development.

The two years since the announcement of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Municipalities Continuing Disclosure Cooperation initiative have contained vast improvements in disclosure for the municipal market but there are still issues to tackle and questions to ask as disclosure continues evolving, market participants speaking on a panel here said.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s proposal to require dealers acting as principals to disclose their markups and markdowns on retail confirmations would add complexity to the market and subject dealers to significant costs, dealers and others said here on Thursday.