Blog

Our experts frequently write blog posts about the findings of the research we are conducting.

Displaying 10 out of 200 results for "Muni Arb".

Autocallables Part IV: Issuers' Day-1 Value Mischief

(Mar 2024)

By Craig McCann and Mike Yan

Earlier this week we posted about the $122 billion in autocallable structured products sold in the past 4 years, mostly issued by UBS, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley. You can read that post here.

We illustrated features of autocallables with reference to the five notes linked to the stock price of Lucid issued by Credit Suisse and Citigroup in a post available here and pointed out a particularly poorly timed issuance by Citigroup linked...

2024 Brokerage Firm Risk Rankings

(Feb 2024)

By Craig McCann, Chuan Qin and Mike Yan

We previously published two papers ranking brokerage firms based on the complaint history associated with their current brokers and the complaints associated with brokers who they employed at the time of the conduct being complained about, wherever those brokers are currently employed.

We recently updated our analysis of complaints against brokerage firms and found that our earlier results were extremely useful for identifying brokerage firms likely...

Blackstone is Watching Us and Just Admitted a Major Misrepresentation

(May 2023)

By Craig McCann and Regina Meng

You can download a pdf of this article to print or email here.

BREIT this week eliminated a prominent marketing graphic touting inflated after-tax yields and tax-equivalent yields after we pointed out that it was false and misleading.

In December 2022 we predicted a run on BREIT and then in April 2023 we identified 7 major areas in which we believe Blackstone and BREIT have been misleading investors.

Blackstone's Choice: Let BREIT Crash or...

Blackstone Fiddles as BREIT Burns

(Apr 2023)

By Craig McCann and Regina Meng.

You can download a pdf of this article to print or email here.

Introduction

In December, we argued that Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust ("BREIT") smoothed and inflated its reported returns for years, leading to large investor inflows. [1] We predicted that a run on the bank had started because of Blackstone's prior conduct, leaving it with two very bad options. BREIT could honor redemption requests at posted NAVs and see its NAV cut in half as the NAV...

Regulation D Offerings Summary Statistics

(Aug 2022)

By Craig McCann, Chuan Qin and Mike Yan.

I. Introduction

Securities issuers can either register their securities with the Securities and Exchange Commission, making extensive information about their business and the offering publicly available, or they can sell unregistered securities making almost no information available to regulators. Issuers of unregistered securities file Form D reports with the SEC on which the issuers provide cursory information and claim an exemption from...

UBS and Santander's Role in Underwriting Employee Retirement System Bonds

(May 2017)

We've written extensively about the UBS Puerto Rico Closed End Funds. These funds were concentrated in the riskiest subset of Puerto Rico municipal bonds - uninsured bonds with little or no market outside of the proprietary UBS funds. Our prior posts on Puerto Rico can be found on our website.

In this post we revisit the Employee Retirement System's 2008 ERS Series B offering to highlight Santander's role in this ill-fated deal. The Series B bonds were the second of three ERS offerings. The...

Puerto Rico Municipal Bond Returns and Sunspots

(Apr 2017)

Introduction

Economists use a statistical procedure called regression analysis to determine whether there is a relationship between economic variables. For example, a labor economist might use regression analysis to determine whether there is a relationship between salaries and education after controlling for differences in job tenure and geographic region. An antitrust economist might use regression analysis to determine whether an attempted collusion in the airline industry effected prices...

Santander's First Puerto Rico Family of Funds: Same Defects, Similar Losses as UBS Puerto Rico and Popular Funds

(Mar 2017)

Introduction

We have previously posted our extensive research into UBS Financial Services of Puerto Rico's closed end funds - some of which were co-managed and sold by Popular.

A summary of our UBS posts as of February 12, 2015 can be downloaded by clicking UBS Puerto Rico's Bond Fund Debacle: What We Know so Far. That summary is also available in Spanish by clicking Lo que Sabemos hasta Ahora de la Debacle de los Fondos de Bonos UBS Puerto Rico.

Two subsequent UBS posts can be accessed by...

Extreme (Expungement) Makeover: Is Scrubbing a 30-Year Record Really Legal?

(Feb 2017)

We have written extensively about problems with FINRA's BrokerCheck system. See our blog posts on BrokerCheck.

Others have written about expungement abuses. For example, see Susan Antilla's "The Unbelievable Story of One Broker and Her Firm Fighting to Clean Her Tarnished Record".

Two weeks ago a FINRA panel rendered an extraordinary expungement award, recommending expungement of 8 awards and 3 settlements. The award in Joseph Anthony La Ferla, Jr. vs. UBS Financial Services Inc. can be viewed...

UBS Puerto Rico's COFINA Conflicts Were Even Worse Than ERS Conflicts

(Oct 2016)

We have written extensively about the wreckage caused by UBS's business model in Puerto Rico. See "UBS Puerto Rico's Bond Fund Debacle: What We Know so Far" and "Lo que Sabemos hasta Ahora de la Debacle de los Fondos de Bonos UBS Puerto Rico". All our Puerto Rico posts are available in English and in Spanish.

UBS's Farm-to-Table business model included encouraging the Employee Retirement System ("ERS") and other entities in Puerto Rico to issue bonds when no viable market except for UBS's...

200 Results

1
2
3
...
20
>