February 6, 2020
Hackers have finally done what bond issuers may have feared most from cyber criminals. A ransomware attack on Pleasant Valley Hospital in West Virginia was partly responsible for the hospital’s breach of its covenant agreement, according to a notice to …
January 14, 2020
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a dispute that has roiled the $3.8 trillion U.S. municipal bond market over payments on special revenue bonds that grew out of Puerto Rico’s ongoing bankruptcy. The justices left in …
May 18, 2018
Some of the biggest U.S. insurers reduced their holdings of state and local government bonds after the corporate tax cut took effect this year, marking a retreat by a key buyer in the $3.9 trillion municipal-securities market. The disclosures, made …
February 12, 2018
Put on the Taylor Swift and pull out the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream: The municipal-bond market’s long relationship with property and casualty insurance companies may be breaking up. That’s because last year’s tax overhaul slashed corporate rates to 21 …
December 22, 2017
The U.S. municipal bond market emerged bruised but not decimated by the federal tax bill that won final approval in the U.S. Congress on Wednesday , analysts said. The worst-case scenario of Congress yanking the federal tax exemption for interest …
February 28, 2017
The disruption in the municipal bond market is punishing some of the most loyal buyers of the debt. The insurance industry has seen more than $5 billion of gains erased on state and local bonds after Donald Trump’s victory in …
June 15, 2016
The Blue Ridge mountain hamlet of Buena Vista, Virginia, is in danger of having its City Hall, police headquarters and municipal golf course seized for defaulting on its debt. The city, with 6,600 residents, has failed for more than a …
May 27, 2015
Australian Symon Drake-Brockman is on the front line of a revolution in European finance. The former head of global debt markets at Royal Bank of Scotland now runs Pemberton Asset Management in London’s genteel Belgravia, several miles from the “Square …
April 13, 2014
Demand for municipal bond insurance is poised to increase as rising interest rates reduce investor appetite for riskier state and local debt, according to Janney Montgomery Scott. Bond insurance accounted for 4.4 percent of new muni issuance last quarter, up …
May 8, 2013
Alabama’s Jefferson County will brief a federal judge on Thursday on its progress toward exiting from bankruptcy, as the county appears likely to become the first big U.S. local government to impose losses on bondholders since the 1930s. The case …