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Displaying 11-20 out of 31 results for "Puerto Rico".

UBS Puerto Rico's Bond Fund Debacle: What We Know so Far

(Feb 2015)

Over the past year, we've posted a dozen short commentaries to our blog post here. We thought it would be helpful to summarize what we know so far. This summary and our prior UBS Puerto Rico blog posts are available in Spanish. You can find all the Spanish-language blog posts by clicking here.

We discussed the national exposure of the UBS Puerto Rico losses in October 2013 in Trouble in Paradise: UBS Puerto Rico Bond Fund Investors Hit Hard. The losses only got worse thereafter. In calendar...

UBS Puerto Rican Funds Did Not Belong in Puerto Rican Investors' Portfolios

(Feb 2015)

Over the past year, we've posted a dozen commentaries about the UBS Puerto Rican closed end bond funds to our blog.

In Taxes, Puerto Rico Municipal Bonds and the UBS Funds we show that preferential tax treatment for Puerto Rican investments cannot justify what would otherwise be unsuitable concentrations of investors' portfolios in Puerto Rico municipal bonds. We focused our attention in that post on mainland municipal bond alternatives to Puerto Rican municipal bonds and showed that even...

15 Days in Puerto Rico Cost UBS Clients Over $1 Billion

(Dec 2014)

We've shown in recent posts that UBS underwrote $1.7 billion of unmarketable ERS bonds and bought them into the UBS PR Funds. You can find our earlier blog posts here. UBS made room these ERS bonds by selling out of the Funds other bonds UBS didn't underwrite. UBS bought the ERS bonds it underwrote in 2008 because there was no other market for the bonds it was underwriting.

Recently we illustrated how UBS-underwritten conflicted bonds purchased by UBS into the funds in 2008 caused losses in...

What Hell Hath UBS Puerto Rico Wrought

(Nov 2014)

We've shown in recent posts that UBS underwrote $1.7 billion of unmarketable ERS and $1.35 billion of COFINA bonds and bought them into the UBS PR Funds in 2007 and 2008. You can find our earlier blog posts on Puerto Rican Funds. UBS made room for these ERS and COFINA bonds by selling out of the Funds, roughly $3 billion of other bonds UBS didn't underwrite. UBS bought the ERS and COFINA bonds it underwrote in 2007 and 2008, because there was no other market for the bonds it was...

UBS PR Funds Also Bought $1.35 Billion of UBS Underwritten COFINA Bonds in 2007 and 2008

(Nov 2014)

Yesterday in our post "UBS Succumbed to Conflicts and Purchased $1.7 Billion of Employee Retirement System Bonds into its Puerto Rican Municipal bond Funds in 2008", we showed that UBS underwrote $1.7 billion of unmarketable ERS bonds and bought them into the UBS PR Funds in 2008. Today, we show similar conflicts led UBS to underwrite unmarketable 2007 and 2008 Puerto Rico Sales Tax Financing Corporation (COFINA) bonds and stuff them into the Funds. COFINA issued two series of bonds in 2007...

UBS Succumbed to Conflicts and Purchased $1.7 Billion of Employee Retirement System Bonds into its Puerto Rican Municipal bond Funds in 2008

(Nov 2014)

In today's post we show that UBS underwrote unmarketable Employee Retirement System bonds and bought them into the UBS Funds in 2008. Friday, we'll show similar conflicts led UBS to underwrite unmarketable 2008 COFINA bonds and then stuff them into the UBS Funds.

The Puerto Rican Employee Retirement System was acutely and chronically underfunded. Figure 1 is a plot of the PR funding ratio and the median of the 50 states' funding ratios. The states median funding ratio fluctuated between 80%...

UBS Stuffed $2.5 Billion of ERS and COFINA Bonds it Underwrote in Its Puerto Rican Funds in 2007 and 2008

(Nov 2014)

We've written extensively about the UBS Puerto Rican Municipal Bond Funds. You can find our earlier blog posts about Puerto Rican Funds on our blog. In a January 2014 blog post titled "Diversification and UBS Puerto Rico Bond Fund Losses", we pointed out that the losses suffered by investors in the UBS PR Funds were caused by the portfolios' high leverage and concentration in Employee Retirement System and Sales Tax Authority (COFINA) bonds. In a December 2013 post titled "Merry Christmas...

The Securities and Exchange Commission Sanctions Brokers Over Sale of Puerto Rican Municipal Bonds

(Nov 2014)

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced sanctions today against 13 brokerage firms for selling high risk Puerto Rican municipal bonds in March 2014 in denominations well below the $100,000 minimum specified in the offering circular. The SEC press release with links to the individual orders can be found on the SEC website.

Kyle Glazier and Lynn Hume broke the story about small denomination trades in the Puerto Rico bond offering in contravention of the offering document in the Bond...

Taxes, Puerto Rico Municipal Bonds and the UBS Funds

(Oct 2014)

We've written extensively about the UBS Puerto Rican Municipal Bond Funds on our blog. Puerto Rico's unique tax regime keeps coming up and we thought it was worth a blog post clearing this matter up.

Puerto Rican residents don't pay federal income tax but do pay very high income taxes. The Puerto Rican maximum marginal income tax rate is 33%, reached at only $50,000 per year of taxable income.

The income on Puerto Rican municipal bonds is exempt from the state income tax that would be paid...

The MSRB Re-Writes History

(Mar 2014)

Kyle Glazier and Lynn Hume's story in the Bond Buyer last week, "Brokers Violate Puerto Rico OS, MSRB Rules with Retail Trades", about small denomination trades in the recent Puerto Rico bond offering in contravention of the offering document set off a firestorm. The Wall Street Journal's "Finra Examining Trading in Puerto Rico Bonds" and Bloomberg's "Finra Says It's Examining Trading in New Puerto Rico Bonds" both reported on Friday that FINRA was looking into the suspect trades.

What did...

31 Results

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