New Protections for State and Local Governments
Effective August 2, 2012, underwriters of municipal securities will have explicit and expanded obligations to state and local governments to provide them with more information about potential transactions, among other things.
Federal regulations established by the MSRB already require underwriters to treat state and local governments fairly. The new rules impose specific requirements related to fair treatment, and cover key areas in which underwriters interact with state and local governments in securities transactions. The MSRB believes that the new requirements will provide significant new protections for state and local governments.
MSRB Adds Yield Data on Inter-Dealer Trades to EMMA
Yield information for municipal securities transactions between dealers is now available on the MSRB’s Electronic Municipal Market Access (EMMA®) website. As of April 30, 2012, EMMA provides free public access to the same price and yield information for all of the more than 10 million municipal securities transactions that occur in the market, both those between customers and dealers, and those between dealers.
MSRB Executive Director Lynnette Kelly Receives Public Service Award
MSRB Holds Quarterly Board Meeting
The MSRB held its quarterly Board of Directors meeting April 25-27, 2012 where it addressed issues related to protecting municipal market participants and enhancing market transparency. The Board addressed the following issues:
Continuing Disclosure Submissions Trend Higher in First Quarter 2012
The number of continuing disclosure documents received by the MSRB totaled 39,549 in the first quarter of 2012, up 7.5 percent from the 36,780 documents received in the same period in 2011 and slightly higher than the 38,735 documents received in the last calendar quarter of 2011. Financial disclosures accounted for approximately 38 percent of all disclosures in the first quarter and event disclosures accounted for the remaining 62 percent.
Bond calls and audited financial statements or comprehensive annual financial report (CAFR) disclosures accounted for most of the documents submitted in the first three months of 2012, with 28.2 percent and 25.1 percent, respectively. Annual financial information and operating data submissions accounted for 22.5 percent of the documents while quarterly/monthly financial information accounted for 6.0 percent.
Recently released quarterly statistics on municipal trading activity, continuing disclosure submissions or variable rate resets can be found here.
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