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 When it comes to municipal market disclosure, it is better to
be inclusive than selective. Municipal bond issuers support the integrity
of the market by disclosing to investors material information about their bond
issues fairly, equitably and in the public domain.
Selective disclosure – an often unintentional sharing of
material, nonpublic information to a select group of investors – creates an
information imbalance, regardless of whether a recipient trades on the basis of
the information or not. Municipal officials talking with a few constituents after
a townhall meeting may inadvertently make selective disclosure by casually
mentioning additional information about bond projects not raised during the
public meeting. Investor roadshows, conferences and one-on-one investor calls
or meetings, while not inherently problematic, can become so if the information
shared is material to bondholders and not made public.
The MSRB makes it possible for bond issuers to
provide timely and complete disclosure of material information to bondholders through
its Electronic Municipal Market Access
(EMMA®) website. Making
a voluntary disclosure on EMMA is a simple step to ensure that information is promptly available to the public
at large. Read more about the MSRB’s resources
to help issuers carefully manage their response to instances of selective
disclosure.
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 In
September, the MSRB published a primer and resource for policymakers that underscores the role of municipal securities in financing infrastructure. Municipal
Securities: Financing the Nation’s Infrastructure provides a basic
understanding of municipal securities, how the municipal market provides access
to capital for over 50,000 state and local governments that own and maintain
the majority of public works, and the role of the federal government and
public-private partnerships in investing in public infrastructure.
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Bloomberg BVAL® Now Available on EMMA®
Many
municipal issuers and their municipal advisors use market indicators as part of
the bond pricing process to provide a benchmark when establishing offering
yields on new bond issues. The MSRB this month added Bloomberg’s BVAL Municipal
AAA Curve to the group of municipal market yield curves and
indices on its EMMA website.
Bloomberg’s BVAL Municipal AAA Curve gives users another tool to help
monitor the level and direction of municipal bond interest rates and compare
relative yields of specific municipal securities.
Bloomberg’s
BVAL Municipal AAA Curve is available on EMMA’s Tools and Resources page, as are a daily yield curve from the Associated Press
(AP) and historical index data for five different indices from Standard &
Poor’s (S&P). Access yield curves and indices on EMMA.
Read about understanding yield curves
and indices in the MSRB Education Center.
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 The
MSRB is now accepting comments on its review of rules for
municipal securities dealers on the primary offering of securities, and it values input
from bond issuers. The request for
comment asks, among other things, whether dealers should be required to provide more
information to bond issuers regarding
the designation and allocation of securities in a primary
offering. Comments are due November 13, 2017 and
can be submitted directly from a link in the request for
comment.
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It's Your Deal is
a quarterly resource guide published by the MSRB to provide objective and
useful information to state and local governments that issue
municipal bonds. As part of its mission to protect municipal bond issuers,
the MSRB regulates municipal advisors and municipal securities dealers,
operates the Electronic
Municipal Market Access (EMMA®) website, and
offers free educational resources in the MSRB Education Center.
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