Bonds

Municipals were slightly weaker Monday, but outperformed U.S. Treasuries which saw larger losses across the curve. Equities sold off. Triple-A yields rose one to four basis points while U.S. Treasury yields rose up to 11 with the largest losses out long. The two-year muni-to-Treasury ratio Monday was at 63%, the three-year at 61%, the five-year

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s $5.65 billion proposed budget taps borrowing and other short-term fixes to close a structural deficit. One-time maneuvers include eliminating $30 million in scheduled reserve contributions and borrowing $25 million, rather than using cash, to fund infrastructure projects. Gloria’s budget would increase spending on homeless prevention programs, street paving and flood

The Department of the Treasury is expected to follow up its March-issued updated FAQs on the American Rescue Plan’s State and Local Fiscal Recovery Program with further guidance on how counties and local governments will be expected to handle reporting and compliance requirements. The 107-page guidance in March provided further detail on some of the

The private sector has until the end of April to submit unsolicited proposals for transportation projects to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. PennDOT’s Office of Public-Private Partnerships, one of the country’s most active P3 state DOT agencies, accepts unsolicited P3 bids twice a year, in April and October. Interested companies can submit proposals “offering innovative

Florida is coming to market early this week with a $1.5 billion taxable bond sale to bulk up the state’s Hurricane Catastrophe Fund. The State Board of Administration Finance Corp. is planning to issue $1.5 billion of taxable revenue bonds in two maturities. “We convened with the underwriting group today and signed off on what

Duluth, Minnesota-based St. Luke’s Hospital’s new affiliation with Wisconsin-based Aspirus has lifted the prospects for its speculative-grade bonds. S&P Global Ratings placed the hospital’s BB-plus rated bonds on CreditWatch with positive implications April 5, citing the March transaction which made Aspirus responsible for all of St. Luke’s debt. A CreditWatch positive typically means that S&P

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

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

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

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