Bonds

The municipal bond market experienced its seventh straight year of positive performance in 2020, but will the progress toward recovery continue in the second half of the year? For insight, Michael Scarchilli, editor-in-chief of The Bond Buyer, sat down with PNC EVP and public finance head Rob Daily, Hilltop Securities vice chairman and head of

As climate change accelerates, electric grids are expected to experience severe weather events that are well beyond the historical conditions for which they were built. In this session, moderator Donald J. Gonzales, senior managing director of the San Antonio office of Estrada Hinojosa & Co., Inc. is joined by panelists Chris Jumper, director of Assured;

Municipals were a touch weaker outside of 15 years Wednesday as U.S. Treasury yields rose after the Federal Open Market Committee minutes were released but pared back losses as the afternoon progressed and were back at Tuesday’s levels near the close. The tapering conversation continues, but Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell said the FOMC

The Federal Reserve has toyed for years with opening something called a standing repo facility to prevent short-term rates markets from blowing up. Following a 2019 disruption and another early in the pandemic, the central bank finally took that step. The permanent repurchase-agreement facility, one for domestic firms and another for foreign ones, will backstop

The Puerto Rico Oversight Board reached a deal for an improved treatment of the Puerto Rico Infrastructure and Finance Authority rum tax bonds with two bond insurers, which had been key opponents of the central government debt deal. The board announced the deal with Ambac Assurance and Financial Guaranty Insurance Company Tuesday morning in a

Municipals were slightly firmer in secondary trading while new-issues were repriced to lower yields from initial pricing wires. U.S. Treasuries were stronger and equities sold off ahead of the FOMC meeting Wednesday. The current market technicals combined with a slowdown in issuance is creating a general malaise in the municipal market, according to a New

The Government Finance Research Center at University of Illinois Chicago has tapped public and not-for-profit financial management professional Deborah Carroll to fill the director’s shoes being vacated by the retiring Michael Pagano. Carroll comes from the University of Central Florida where she was an associate professor in the School of Public Administration and the director

Municipals were stronger on the short end, hitting record low levels for the second time this year, in quiet trading while U.S. Treasuries were treading water and equities did much the same as all markets await Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting announcement. Triple-A benchmarks moved one to two basis points lower inside of five

The Puerto Rico Oversight Board cast doubt Friday on a temporary deal between the truckers and the interim governor which is pausing the truckers’ strike. Around 9:30 p.m. Thursday Gov. Pedro Pierluisi announced the temporary deal in two tweets. The deal was with the striking truckers’ union, Frente Amplio de Camioneros. Pierluisi was off the

Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp. agreed to pay $230 million to resolve federal charges in connection with an alleged bribery scheme involving a $1 billion public bailout for two nuclear power plants owned by a bankrupt subsidiary with municipal debt. Federal authorities charged the public utility holding company with conspiring to commit honest services wire fraud.

What bond-market guru Mohammed El-Erian said Friday was enough to make bond investors listen like they’re in an old E.F. Hutton commercial. “Inflation is not going to be transitory,” the chief economic adviser at Allianz SE said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. El-Erian likened it to his belief in 1999 that Argentina would default,

Municipals were steady in typical summer Friday style ahead of a less-than-robust new-issue calendar to end July. The U.S. Treasury 10-year ends 10 basis points higher than it started the week, but back to levels of a week ago, while the stock market rallied and earnings pushed them to all-time record highs Friday. Triple-A benchmarks

The Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority plans to refund $1.8 billion of outstanding 2012 debt in an August deal, coming into a market that is starved for high-yield paper. For several months the authority and the Puerto Rico Oversight Board has mentioned the possibility of refunding the authority’s Series 2012A bonds. On Friday it

Municipal trading was light and triple-A benchmarks were a touch stronger on the short end as the last of the week’s larger-than-usual calendar closed accounts and the municipal market largely charted its own course. For the 20th consecutive week, Refinitiv Lipper reported inflows into municipal bond mutual funds, this time $1.727 billion, with high-yield seeing

Analysts say a strike of Puerto Rico truckers is a threat to the island’s economy and a challenge for the Oversight Board. The board spent a page in the most recent fiscal plan talking about the need to not extend the minimum rates to privately negotiated trucking contracts. The truckers are striking for this as

Municipal yields rose a slightly outside of 10-years after U.S. Treasuries swung back up double-digit basis points from Monday’s lows as stocks rebounded from large losses on Monday. Municipals ignored the losses in UST as triple-A benchmark curves saw cuts of two to four basis points out longer while the short end of the curve

The top bond counsel firms combined for a total of $220.03 billion in 6,077 transactions in the first half of 2021, up from the $191.51 billion in 5,124 deals in the first half of 2020. Only one firm remained in the same spot they were at this point last year, the rest of the rankings

eMerge Americas, a venture-backed platform focused on changing Miami into the tech hub of the Americas, closed a round of investment led by Florida Funders, the firm announced on Tuesday. Florida Funders is a a venture capital fund and an angel investor network, and its investment in eMerge Americas is aimed at helping Miami’s tech

The National Federation of Municipal Analysts has completed work on a white paper calling for targeted emergency event disclosures from state and local governments. The document, dated June but announced earlier this month by NFMA, is the final draft of a paper first floated in March. While the paper focuses on COVID-19 disclosure, NFMA has

Municipals underperformed a flight-to-safety rally in U.S. Treasuries as COVID-19 and its variants surge around the globe, pushing edgy investors to flee the stock market, as some contemplate the idea the economic recovery has peaked, and will potentially regress from the virus’ effects. Municipal triple-A benchmarks were pushed to lower yields by one to three

Richard “Dick” L. Weill, 78, a pioneer in the financial guaranty insurance industry and former vice chairman of MBIA Insurance Corporation, died on July 4. With over 40 years of experience in the municipal bond industry, Weill was a former partner and municipal bond attorney at Kutak Rock before joining MBIA in 1989 as general

Connecticut Treasurer Shawn Wooden grew up in Hartford’s impoverished North End. “I know how the cycle of poverty helped push people back,” he said. That helped shape his push for his “passion project” for the past legislative session — CT Baby Bonds. The program, which Wooden calls first in the nation, took effect June 30

Florida has seen 14 straight months of job growth, gaining 69,300 private sector jobs in June, the state’s Department of Economic Opportunity said Friday. June’s increase was more than double the May gain of 34,600 jobs and the largest rise of the year. Since the height of the pandemic in April 2020, Florida has gained

The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority of Illinois trimmed its spread penalties in the first primary outing of an Illinois-linked borrower to reap the benefits of the state’s positive rating momentum. The agency that manages Chicago’s downtown convention center campus priced $811 million of refunding bonds Thursday. It saw a 98 basis point spread to

Chicago is searching for a financial advisor to help assess development proposals as it looks to stake out a share of the casino gambling market with the promise of a roughly $200 million annual jackpot. The city launched a request for qualifications for an advisor July 14 to help evaluate proposals it receives from a

Municipals ended the week steady along with U.S. Treasuries ahead of one of the more diverse and chunky calendars the summer has seen while supply still simply isn’t keeping up with demand, which should keep municipal yields in a tight range. The total potential volume for next week is estimated at $9.033 billion, up from total

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the question of whether to nominate Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for a second term is a conversation for her and President Joe Biden, declining to give her opinion in a televised interview. “That’s a discussion I’m going to have with the president,” Yellen said Thursday on CNBC. The

New rhetoric from the Biden administration may add a degree of difficulty to the nonprofit hospital merger trend that remains solid in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 27 mergers and acquisitions involving not-for-profit and for-profit hospitals were announced in the first half of the year, compared to 43 for the first

The Puerto Rico Oversight Board reached a verbal agreement with bond insurers on a debt repayment plan on Wednesday, two days after they reached an agreement with unsecured creditors representing the largest debt holders in the negotiations. Lawyers at Proskauer Rose LLP representing the Oversight Board, and federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain, agreed to delay

Chicago Public Schools laid out a proposed $9.3 billion fiscal 2022 budget that directs $707 million towards capital and spends down about $1 billion of the district’s $2.6 billion of federal relief to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposed budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 raises spending by about $900 million