Patrick McGee

Municipal bond insurers would still be thriving today if big banks hadn't defrauded the insurers. That's what executives representing two big bond insurers told a state hearing Wednesday.

Ever since private-label mortgage-backed securities litigation began, aggrieved investors have faced an uneasy trade-off between cost and thoroughness: They must prove their losses stem from systemic underwriting flaws, but they can ill afford the time and money required to bicker over how each loan was underwritten.

The N.Y. Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that MBIA did not have any way to discover if GMAC intentionally misrepresented the true nature of mortgage-backed securities that ...

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was founded in 1869 but only last week did it begin targeting the mainstream retail-buyer base for municipal bonds.

Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Merrill Lynch continue to vie for the top underwriting position in the municipal bond industry, according to midyear rankings from Thomson Reuters.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., consistently one of the top municipal bond underwriters, has been responding to increased appetite in the market recently by expanding its retail networks, marketing taxable municipal bonds for international distribution and bulking up its public finance staff.

With the start of a municipal bond underwriting operation, U.S. Bancorp is moving ever so slowly toward the business model of its bigger brethren.