Fixed income

The Securities and Exchange Commission has postponed the municipal securities field hearing it planned to hold in Chicago on Nov. 16.

The company offers a way for advisors to gauge bond prices amid the retail investor market.

The Internal Revenue Service is kicking off the first round of audits of Build America Bonds and is asking issuers if any potentially related entities, such as pension plans, are buying their BABs, according to issuers and IRS officials.

Now is the time for a balanced approach to both equities and fixed income, MFS advises.

Center State Bank of Florida in Winter Haven seems to have entered the correspondent banking business at the perfect time.

The idea of a bond bubble keeps bubbling to the surface. The argument is sound. Interest rates are at all time lows. In the bizarro world of bonds this means that prices are at all-time highs. Meanwhile investors spooked by the stock markets are pouring into bonds the way they poured into, well, real estate before 2008 and technology before 2000.

After a short-lived period of inflows last week, tax-exempt money market funds experienced $1.81 billion of outflows and settled at $330.29 billion in total net assets for the week ending Oct. 11, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

Fidelity has been underwriting more bonds than since the late 1980s.

Municipal market participants should not expect the Treasury Department to simply rubber-stamp the existing tax-exempt bond rules for issue price when it comes to Build America Bonds, a Treasury official told bond lawyers at a recent meeting.

In a move that “further enhances the fixed-income capabilities of the firm,” Highmark Capital Management has hired Jeffrey Klein as VP and portfolio manager for its Fixed Income Group, the Union Bank subsidiary said Tuesday.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch fended off a summer onslaught from Citi to hold on to the top spot among municipal bond underwriters through three quarters of the year.

Latin America and Asia are now an integral part of large funds’ bond and equity strategies.

The Securities and Exchange Commission plans to launch its new office of municipal securities by the end of October, chairman Mary Schapiro said in prepared testimony presented to the Senate Banking Committee Thursday.

Nearly all The Bond Buyer’s weekly yield indexes rose slightly as an influx of new-issue supply weighed on municipals.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has quietly hired the head-hunting firm Korn/Ferry ­International to find candidates to lead a new municipal securities office that will have a higher stature within the SEC.

The return of bank profitability, coupled with some of the provisions of the federal stimulus, coaxed banks to buy state and local government debt in the first half.

ING Investment Management Americas is launching a globally focused fixed-income fund that is expected to outperform market benchmarks by investing in debt securities for its institutional clients, the firm said Tuesday.

SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, the full-service corporate and investment banking arm of SunTrust Banks, has beefed up its institutional fixed-income team with the addition of six professionals, the firm said.

While municipal market professionals said they do not believe there is systemic risk in state and local government debt, there are underlying issues and credit challenges.

A number of Build America Bond issuers are seeking voluntary closing agreements with the Internal Revenue Service to settle accidental violations of a de minimis premium rule, an IRS official told industry officials in Manhattan yesterday.