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Contact: Jennifer A. Galloway, Chief Communications Officer
             (703) 797-6600
             jgalloway@msrb.org 

MSRB Publishes Report on Municipal Bond Continuing Disclosure Documents

Alexandria, VA – The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) today published a report summarizing the type and number of continuing disclosure documents for municipal securities submitted by issuers of municipal securities to the MSRB’s Electronic Municipal Market Access (EMMA®) website.

Continuing disclosures report the financial or operating condition of a municipal bond issuer over time, as well as specific events occurring after issuance that can have affect the ability of the issuer to repay the bond. The EMMA website has been the official repository for municipal security continuing disclosure documents since July 1, 2009.

Between July 2009 and June 2012, the MSRB received 396,091 continuing disclosure documents, according to the MSRB’s Continuing Disclosure Statistical Summary. On a month-over-month basis, the report shows fairly steady increases in most types of continuing disclosures submitted to the MSRB by municipal bond issuers and obligated persons.

Other highlights of the report include:

  • Financial and operating disclosures accounted for about 47 percent of all submitted disclosures submitted to the MSRB during the three-year period beginning in July 2009.
  • The State of California and its municipalities submitted most of the continuing disclosure documents to the MSRB, accounting for nearly 12 percent of all disclosures between July 2009 and June 2012. 
  • About 73 percent, or 153,092, of all event disclosures submitted from July 2009 through June 2012 were bond calls and 14 percent, or 28,509, were rating changes.    

The EMMA website is a centralized online database operated by the MSRB that provides free public access to official disclosure documents and trade data associated with municipal bonds issued in the United States. In addition to current credit rating information, the EMMA website also makes available real-time trade data and primary market and continuing disclosure documents for over one million outstanding municipal bonds, as well as current interest rate information, liquidity documents and other information for most variable rate municipal securities.

The MSRB also publishes an annual Fact Book and quarterly municipal securities statistics, which are available electronically on the MSRB’s website at www.msrb.org.  

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) protects and strengthens the municipal bond market, enabling access to capital, economic growth, and societal progress in tens of thousands of communities across the country. The MSRB fulfills this mission by creating trust in our market through informed regulation of dealers and municipal advisors that protects investors, issuers and the public interest; building technology systems that power our market and provide transparency for issuers, institutions, and the investing public; and serving as the steward of market data that empowers better decisions and fuels innovation for the future. The MSRB is a self-regulatory organization governed by a board of directors that has a majority of public members, in addition to representatives of regulated entities. The MSRB is overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Congress.

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