Washington

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.