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

Displaying 10 out of 10 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...

Securities-Based Lending

(Jun 2015)

In this blog post I summarize my recently published working paper, "Securities-Based Lending".

Introduction

The securities industry has long targeted the liability side of the customer's balance sheet as an opportunity to cross-sell banking products, increase wallet share, and diversify revenue streams away from cyclical trading commissions. In the current euphoric market environment, with portfolio values soaring and borrowing rates historically low, lending to customers has become "Wall...

Welcome to Muni Markup Week on the SLCG Blog

(Jun 2013)

Today SLCG posted a new working paper titled "Using EMMA to Assess Municipal Bond Markups". In it, our colleagues Geng Deng and Craig McCann report a veritable pandemic of excessive markups charged to retail investors in the municipal bond market. This work has been highlighted in a recent Wall Street Journal article by Jason Zweig. Jason's looked at markups generically in the past and we're happy this story has caught his attention.

The primary findings of the paper are that:

Municipal bond...

SLCG Research: Leveraged Municipal Bond Arbitrage

(Oct 2010)

SLCG released today 'Leveraged Municipal Bond Arbitrage: What Went Wrong?'. Leveraged municipal bond arbitrage is a strategy employed by fixed income hedge funds. This strategy buys long term municipal bonds and sells or shorts long term Treasury bonds while hedging with interest rate swaps. The strategy would seek to profit from the difference in the rates it receives from the municipal bonds and the rates it pays on the Treasury bonds and interest rate swaps.

Brokers marketed hedge...

SLCG Research: Auction Rate Securities

(Oct 2010)

SLCG released today 'Auction Rate Securities'.

Auction rate securities were first issued in the mid-1980s by corporations. Over the next two decades ARS were issued widely by institutions ranging from closed-end mutual funds, municipalities to student loan trusts. ARS were long-term floating rate securities whose coupon payments were determined at auctions that were typically held every 7 to 35 days. ARS were long-term securities with short-term floating rates.

Broker dealers marketed...

SLCG Research: Principal Protected Notes

(Jul 2010)

SLCG released today 'The Anatomy of Principal Protected Absolute Return Notes'.

Structured products are debt securities that often have unconventional and complex payoff structures. Their payoffs are often linked to a security or index, such as the S&P 500 or the Russell 2000, with asset classes ranging from equity, commodities, currencies and debt. A Principal Protected Absolute Return Barrier Note (ARBN) is one structured product that returns the absolute value of the return of the...

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