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Next week, the MSRB joins reporters, civic groups and others
in celebrating the importance of government transparency and public access to
information during Sunshine Week, a
national initiative to promote dialogue about the importance of open government
and freedom of information. Sunshine Week is organized by the American Society
of News Editors and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Throughout the week, the MSRB will highlight the free public
information available on its Electronic
Municipal Market Access (EMMA®) website. The MSRB’s EMMA website is the national
repository for annual financial information and other disclosures from states
and municipalities that have issued debt to finance public projects.
Follow the MSRB on Twitter @MSRB_News and use the hashtag
#SunshineWeek.
The MSRB recently announced that Moody's Investors Service public
finance ratings will be available on EMMA as soon as this summer. The addition will
make all ratings from the largest municipal securities ratings agencies readily
available to investors in a consolidated format together with all other key
information about a municipal security.
Credit ratings on EMMA are displayed along with the trading
and disclosure information for each municipal security, and are also integrated
into EMMA’s advanced search function and price discovery tool. The MSRB invited
all Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations (NRSROs) to make
their municipal credit ratings available on EMMA. EMMA currently provides free
public access to public finance ratings from Fitch Ratings, Kroll Bond Rating
Agency and Standard &Poor’s. Read more
about ratings information available on EMMA.
 The MSRB recently announced that Robert A. Fippinger, one of the country’s preeminent municipal securities attorneys, is now the MSRB’s Chief Legal Officer. Fippinger is responsible for all MSRB legal and external affairs. He oversees market regulation, professional qualification and enforcement support programs, corporate governance, legislative affairs, education and outreach, and communications for the organization.
Prior joining the MSRB as Chief Legal Officer, Fippinger was a senior counsel and partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, which has a large practice area in public finance, and served on the MSRB Board of Directors from 2010 to 2014.
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 Also in February, the MSRB announced that Dall W. Forsythe would join the MSRB Board of Directors as a public member to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Fippinger. Forsythe is a distinguished visiting scholar at the New York University Wagner School of Public Service, where he focuses his academic research on state and local government financial management and securities regulation. Forsythe held positions at Columbia University, the Kennedy School at Harvard, the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College (City University of New York) and State University of New York's University of Albany. He also served as a senior fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government. He also earlier served as budget director for the State of New York, authored Memos to the Governor: An Introduction to State Budgeting, and was managing director of public finance for Lehman Brothers.
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The early months of 2015 showed a noticeable change in the
proportion of municipal fixed and variable rate securities traded compared to a
year earlier. Par amount traded of municipal fixed rate securities accounted
for 75 and 70 percent of all transactions in January and February 2015,
respectively. This level is up considerably from a year ago and from the
monthly average of 60 percent over the past two years. Municipal variable
rate securities, mainly auction rate securities and variable rate demand
obligations, accounted for 21 and 26 percent of all par traded during the first
two months of 2015. In 2007, the proportions of these types of securities were
nearly opposite: fixed rate securities accounted for 26 percent of all
municipal securities traded while variable rate securities accounted for 72
percent.
MSRB to Amend Rules to Create Professional
Qualification Standards for Municipal Advisors March 2, 2015 |
