Lake Erie College, a small private school in Ohio, entered into a forbearance agreement with bondholders after the school didn’t meet certain covenants it agreed to as part of a debt sale.  The Painesville, Ohio-based institution, which has just over 700 undergraduate students, is the latest small college to see its financial struggles extend into

Municipals faced rising yields in the secondary market Wednesday while large new-issues priced in the primary market. U.S. Treasuries were weaker again, and equities saw more losses. The Investment Company Institute Wednesday reported large inflows into municipal bond mutual funds for the week ending Jan. 10, with investors adding $2.066 billion to funds following $77

The Federal Reserve should be able to “methodically and carefully” lower its interest rate target this year, if inflation continues to moderate, Federal Reserve Gov. Christopher Waller said Tuesday. “When the time is right to begin lowering rates, I believe it can and should be lowered methodically and carefully,” Waller said in a Brookings event.

Munis were slightly weaker to start the holiday-shortened ahead of several large new issues, but the asset class outperformed U.S. Treasuries on the day. Equities saw losses. Muni yields were cut up to four basis points, depending on the scale, while UST yields rose eight to 11 basis points. Munis have “struggled to get out

Municipal bond insurance grew 10.4% year-over-year in 2023 leading to the highest market penetration rate since 2008, despite a drop in overall bond volume. While municipal issuance ended 2023 slightly down, demand for bond insurance continued to grow as market participants turned to it for investor confidence, increased market liquidity and enhanced credit ratings. The

The Chicago Board of Education on Wednesday saw its issuer rating and debt ratings from Moody’s Investors Service upgraded a notch, to Ba1 from Ba2 — still speculative grade, but one level below investment-grade status. The rating outlook remains positive after the upgrade. Moody’s cited improvements in Chicago Public Schools’ operating fund net cash balance,

In September 2015, then Bank of England Governor Mark Carney gave a speech in which he famously referred to the “Tragedy of the Horizon.” He was referring to the fact that financial markets tend to mis-price climate risk because the perceived timing for such risk lies far into the future, beyond the normal investment horizon

First Eagle Investments has hired John Suh and Andrew Belsky as credit analysts as the firm continues to build out its high-yield team under Chief Investment Officer and high-yield manager John Miller. Suh, based in New York, previously was a trader/analyst on the high yield desk in JPMorgan’s public finance division. He was at JPMorgan

UBS has settled charges with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, agreeing to a censure and a $100,000 fine for failing to include the Non-Transaction Based Compensation indicator when reporting 91,059 municipal securities transactions to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board. For this, UBS violated MSRB Rule G-14 on customer transaction reporting, which requires firms to report

Washington state’s rating outlook was revised to positive from stable Thursday by S&P Global Ratings, citing the state’s growing economy and strong reserves. The outlook revision means there is a one-in-three chance the state could have its AA-plus rating upgraded to AAA by S&P over the two-year outlook period, said Oscar Padilla, an S&P director.