California received an outlook boost to positive from S&P Global Ratings as the state prepares to sell more than $2 billion of general obligation bonds. The deal will land the week of a Sept. 14 recall election targeting Gov. Gavin Newsom. But California’s surplus and budgetary changes that occurred after the 2008 economic crash will
Bonds
Jennifer Fredericks joined Ice Miller LLP last month to take on the newly created role of director of business development for public finance. Fredericks left Bank of New York Mellon, where she was a vice president of business development for the corporate trust group, to take the Ice Miller position. At BNY Mellon she led
The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to extend the deadline to pass the Series 54 exam two weeks to Nov. 30, 2021, from the previous date of Nov. 12. The extension comes, as promised, shortly after the agency began offering remote examinations following news that a municipal
The municipal market was little changed on Friday as a disappointing August jobs number punctuated an otherwise lackluster day of light trading activity ahead of the Labor Day holiday. Trading fell to a trickle at about $2.1 billion near the close and triple-A benchmarks were unmoved, outperforming a cheaper U.S. Treasury market which saw the
The catastrophic remnants of Hurricane Ida snuck up on Northeast states Wednesday, catching officials and the general population off-guard. But such a storm, still delivering massive amounts of rain more than 1,300 miles from its Louisiana landfall, is no outlier, one New Jersey climate official warned. “It may be a different animal, as you put
The municipal market traded sideways and activity was muted on Thursday as U.S. Treasuries were steady and equities in the black ahead of the much-anticipated employment report to be released Friday. Refinitiv Lipper reported $1.044 billion of inflows into municipal bond mutual funds for the week ending Sept. 1, down from the $1.9 billion a
Widespread Puerto Rico power outages this week are highlighting the extended age of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s infrastructure and its impact on the economy. The outages affected 33% to 37% of the authority’s customers since Monday and will continue to afflict many for a few more days, according to PREPA. Demand has been
Municipal trading dropped 25% on Wednesday after an already very slow few days in the secondary, leaving municipal benchmark yields little changed, as U.S. Treasuries also held steady and most participants began checking out for the holiday weekend. For the 25th week in a row, municipal bond mutual funds saw inflows of nearly $2 billion,
St. Louis’ multi-year trend of surpluses garnered an upgrade from Moody’s Investors Service that reverses a trend of downgrades from the rating agency. Moody’s raised the city’s general obligation rating to A3 with a stable outlook from Baa1 Monday. The St. Louis Municipal Corp.’s lease appropriation debt for essential purposes rose to Baa1 from Baa2
The Puerto Rico Oversight Board asked the Puerto Rico bankruptcy court Monday to continue to hear a suit against a local law that would scuttle the negotiated debt Plan of Adjustment. Lawyers for Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi filed a motion to stay the adversary proceeding, which is like a suit, on Aug. 25. The
The California Institute of the Arts makes its municipal bond market debut this week. Lead manager UBS planned a pre-pricing Tuesday for the performing arts university, followed by a final pricing on Wednesday. The finance team for the $33 million deal also includes Prager & Co. LLC as municipal advisor and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe
Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi is expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit program for the island, which along with another expansion of a federal program, will likely aid the island’s economy, experts said. The federal government will provide $612 million a year for 10 years for the expanded credit, if the local government continues to
New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli cited the strength of the state’s pension system in lowering the long-term assumed rate of return on investments by the $268 billion Common Retirement Fund. The rate will drop to 5.9% from 6.8%, DiNapoli said in approving a recommendation from retirement systems actuary Michael Dutcher. The third-largest pension fund
Unfunded retiree health-care benefits are the most material long-term liability for about one in 10 states and local governments, Moody’s Investors Service says. Retirement liabilities other than pensions — other-post employment liabilities, or OPEB — were roughly $1.1 trillion for the 50 states and more than 7,000 cities, counties and K-12 school districts that Moody’s
Alternative trading system platforms provide the value of visible liquidity and price discovery in the marketplace, especially for municipal securities that are not widely known and transacted when directly compared to broker’s broker platforms, according to a new MSRB report. The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board report compares trading activity on ATS platforms versus broker’s broker
Surging COVID-19 hospitalization rates driven by the highly contagious Delta variant threaten to set back the not-for-profit healthcare sector’s recovery and pose new uncertainties, new reports warn. Hospitalizations are trending upward in all states with the 14-day increase at double-digit percentages for all but a few. The most daunting strains that could negatively impact hospital
Municipals were little changed in light trading on the last Friday of August as U.S. Treasuries made gains as did equities following Federal reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech. The total potential volume for next week is estimated at $4.938 billion, an expected drop as the unofficial final week of summer comes ahead
Federal Reserve Gov. Lael Brainard spoke with the Biden-Harris Federal Reserve transition team in January and with the president’s Council of Economic Advisers in May, her calendar shows. The meeting with the Fed transition team occurred Jan. 8 and included Gary Gensler, who is now Securities and Exchange Commission chairman. Brainard’s diaries were provided to
Leasing to private operators would leave the large majority of the 31 airports owned by city, county, and state governments with significant net proceeds after paying off outstanding airport bonds, allowing their governmental owners to pay down other debt or, in some cases, even eliminate unfunded pension liabilities. That was the conclusion of a study
Weakness moved out the yield curve Thursday as secondary bid-wanteds were still elevated while U.S. Treasuries pared earlier losses and equities sold off in the afternoon as news out of Afghanistan grew worse. For the 25th straight week, Refinitiv Lipper reported inflows into municipal bond funds. Investors put $1.9 billion of cash into the mutual