Washington

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board has named Jay Goldstone, chief financial officer and chief operating officer of San Diego, as its new board chairman, effective Oct. 1 for a one-year term.

Members of the Senate Banking Committee grilled Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Thursday about his knowledge of manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, and raised concerns about its potential impact on state and local governments that entered into Libor-based swaps.

Former employees of financial firms who have already pleaded guilty to rigging muni bond contracts will be allowed to testify in the upcoming bid-rigging trial against former UBS Financial Services Inc. bankers Peter Ghavami, Gary Heinz and Michael Welty, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board officials said Tuesday the board is looking into the Libor scandal to see how it may impact the municipal bond industry.

The federal judge assigned to the upcoming bid-rigging trial against three former UBS Financial Services Inc. bankers has struck down requests to drop all six criminal counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, and witness tampering.

The SEC will be asked to allow federal civil charges to be filed against Miami for failing to disclose serious budget problems in its bond offerings.

Phillip D. Murphy, a former manager of municipal derivatives products at Banc of America Securities LLC, now Bank of America Merrill Lynch, was indicted by a federal grand jury on three counts of conspiracy and wire fraud in connection with a fraudulent scheme to rig bids for municipal-bond related investment agreements.

Rep. Robert Dold, R-Ill., is open to dropping his bid to legislatively remove the Dodd-Frank-mandated federal fiduciary duty for municipal advisors if there is a narrowing of who would be considered an MA, an aide said Friday.

The bill introduced by Rep. Robert Dold, R-Ill., to limit the muni market participants that would be federally regulated as municipal advisors could reduce protection of state and local governments, the chairman of the MSRB warned a congressional panel.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to propose Congress give it authority to set primary and secondary market disclosure standards for municipal issuers.