Bonds

The New York City Municipal Water Finance Authority is returning to the municipal bond market for its second issuance this year.  The authority is scheduled to price $450 million of fixed-rate second resolution bonds, with a retail order period Monday followed by institutional pricing Tuesday, according to an online investor presentation. $400 million will fund

Geopolitical turmoil roiled markets Friday, sending investors on a flight-to-safety trade into U.S. Treasuries while equities sold off after news reports that Israel was bracing for an attack by Iran on government targets and that China was providing Russia with drone and missile components.  Municipal bonds followed USTs as yields fell in both asset classes

The City of Richmond, Virginia is changing course on a nearly $280 million bond issuance that will build a new minor league baseball stadium anchoring a $2.4 billion mixed-use project on 67-acres just northwest of downtown Richmond.  Last week the Diamond District project, which includes retail, housing, and office space took a public financing turn when the

Bond insurance continued its upward trajectory in the first quarter of 2024, leading the two top municipal bond insurers to expand. Municipal bond insurance grew 24.4% in the first quarter of the 2024 year-over-year. The top two municipal bond insurers wrapped $7.132 billion in the first quarter of 2024, up from the $5.735 billion of

Spreads on Build America Bonds have widened “significantly” in the last few months amid a wave of refinancings despite a debate over the legal ability of issuers to call the debt, according to municipal bond strategists. So far this year, the BABs index option-adjust spread has cheapened 10bps compared to the ICE Broad Taxable Municipal

The late March collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge raises questions about the age and resiliency of U.S. infrastructure that engineers and the finance industry will need to address together. That’s the view of Maria Lehman, immediate past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, GHD’s infrastructure market leader for the United States

The not-for-profit healthcare sector continues to face challenges, including a high number of bond covenant violations, which can provide an early warning of payment defaults, said Lisa Washburn, chief credit officer and managing director for Municipal Market Analytics.   “The hospital sector has definitely seen improvement since the worst of 2022, but I would still

Municipals were mixed Thursday in secondary trading as focus shifted to California’s nearly $1.5 billion of tax-exempt and taxable general obligation bond deals in the competitive market while U.S. Treasuries were weaker out long after Wednesday’s short-end selloff and equities were in the black at the close. Triple-A yield curves saw a mix of bumps

S&P Global Ratings lowered Dunkirk, New York’s general obligation bonds by three notches to BBB-minus from A-minus and withdrew the rating. S&P removed the rating from negative CreditWatch where it had been placed on March 4. The outlook on the credit is negative. The GOs had been secured by the city’s faith-and-credit pledge. “We lowered

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s upcoming meeting of its board of directors April 17-18 will focus discussion on its many rule proposals underway. The board will review the public comments they received as part of the request for information on small firms, which saw 22 different firms and groups submit responses. They will also discuss

An increase in trading activity and the number of pre-trade pricing quotes in the municipal securities market is leading to improved pricing, a research report from the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board detailed. The report, released Thursday, looked at the number of live quotes and trades on two ATS platforms from three month periods in 2021

John Miller, a veteran municipal bond investment banker and financial advisor, has been hired by Build America Mutual as a senior advisor. In his role, he will focus on boosting the primary market’s use of bond insurance for sizable infrastructure and public power projects. Miller was most recently a director at American Public Infrastructure, a

Celebrating Ohio’s “highest possible credit rating,” Gov. Mike DeWine on Wednesday delivered his State of the State address to the General Assembly at the statehouse in Columbus. DeWine centered his speech around the children of the state, on whom he said the future depends. He gestured to his new great-granddaughter, Betty Jane, up in the

Easterly Asset Management acquired two municipal investment mutual funds and hired two managers, including the former co-head of municipals at OppenheimerFunds Rochester, to run them. Easterly, a Massachusetts-based asset manager with $3 billion under management, added PSP High Income Municipal Bond Mutual Fund and the PSP Short-Term Municipal Fund, which have a combined $600 million

A new first-of-its-kind environmental rule that lays out a path to reducing so-called “forever chemicals” in U.S. drinking water would cost municipal water systems up to $40 billion in capital costs and billions more in annual compliance costs. That’s the potential price tag floated by industry groups representing publicly-owned water systems after the Environmental Protection

A slew of mega deals helped push issuance in the first quarter of 2024 to over $100 billion, buoyed by favorable market conditions and a resurgence in refunding outstanding Build America Bonds, leading some firms to reconsider total issuance expectations for the year. Sixteen deals topped $1 billion in the first quarter of 2024, double

Despite a rating upgrade ahead of the deal, Louisiana paid a wider spread to a 10-year benchmark when it sold general obligation bonds Tuesday than it did a year ago. In Tuesday’s pricing, the state paid a 15 basis point spread to the Triple-A benchmark evaluated by BVAL for the 2034 maturity, with 5% coupons.

Riley Moore, right, West Virginia’s treasurer, is running for a U.S. House seat. Moore has helped create a blacklist in his home state for banks that refuse to work with businesses in certain industries. INWOOD, W.Va. — It’s important, Riley Moore says, for people to know that his father was a banker.  Tall, sharp-eyed and

S&P Global Ratings on Wednesday upgraded its long-term rating on Detroit’s unlimited-tax general obligation debt to investment grade, raising it to BBB from BB-plus. The outlook is stable. The rating agency said the change reflected a stronger financial position and its “increased confidence in the city’s ability to sustain balance within the construct of its

Municipals were weaker, but outperformed a large U.S. Treasury selloff that hit the short end the hardest and pushed the 10-year well over 4.5% after a hot inflation report showed Fed rate cuts would be pushed further out. Equities sold off as well. “The news is sparking an equity market selloff while sending bond yields

Norfolk, Virginia, has canceled its plans to call some of its outstanding Build America Bonds, according to a financial filing issued Monday. In March, the city said in a conditional notice that it was considering a redemption of $56 million of its direct-pay taxable 2010B capital improvement BABs under an extraordinary optional redemption before the