Washington

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board has hired former BondDesk Trading LLC president John Bagley as its chief market structure officer, the MSRB announced Wednesday.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, calling municipal securities the "lifeblood" of U.S. infrastructure development, pressed regulators to revise federal banking liquidity rules to classify certain munis as high-quality liquid assets.

The National Association of State Treasurers' priorities include maintaining the tax- exempt status of municipal bonds, preventing local government investment pools from being hurt by money market mutual fund reforms, and helping to develop criteria under which munis could be considered high-quality liquid assets, said its incoming president, David Lillard, Tennessee' treasurer.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board is seeking public comment on its priorities as it plans for the next two years and beyond, the MSRB announced Monday.

The Municipal Advisory Council of Texas is allowing issuers to post their IRMA representations on its website to help obtain information from financial services firms without violating Securities and Exchange Commission's municipal advisor rule.

The National Association of Bond Lawyers has announced that it will present three of its members with awards when the group meets in Chicago next month.

Municipal securities will not qualify as high-quality liquid assets under a new federal liquidity coverage ratio rule slated to take effect on Jan. 1. However, the Federal Reserve Board is working on a proposal to include some municipal bonds as HQLA at a later date.

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing bonds issued in 2011 for a charter school operator in Chicago that settled securities fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June.

State treasurers and financial officers are urging federal banking regulators to identify quantitative liquidity standards or characteristics that would allow at least some municipal securities to qualify as high-quality liquid assets in a rule to be released on Wednesday.

A more than $700 million dollar deal that RBC Capital Markets executed in New Mexico earlier this month is has raised the eyebrows of some market participants, who think the firm's municipal advisory relationships with several New Mexico cities created a conflict of interest when it underwrote the deal for a power authority run by those municipalities.