Durante 2007 y 2008 UBS Rellenó sus Fondos de Puerto Rico con $2.5 Billones de Bonos de ASR y COFINA Suscritos por Ellos Mismos
(Nov 2014)
Hemos escrito extensamente sobre los Fondos UBS de Bonos Municipales de Puerto Rico. Pueden encontrar nuestra entrada de blog más reciente aquí. En la entrada de blog de Enero de 2014 disponible aquí, nosotros señalamos que las pérdidas sufridas por los inversionistas de los Fondos UBS PR fueron causadas por el alto apalancamiento y concentración de las carteras en bonos del Sistema de Retiro de Empleados y en la Corporación del Fondo de Interés Apremiante (COFINA). En nuestra entrada de...
La Comisión de Bolsa de Valores Impone Sanciones a los Agentes de Bolsa por la Venta de Bonos Municipales de Puerto Rico
(Nov 2014)
La Comisión de Bolsa de Valores (SEC por sus siglas en inglés) anunció el día de hoy sanciones contra 13 compañías de corretaje. En marzo del 2014, estas compañías vendieron denominaciones por debajo de los $100,000 en contra del documento de oferta de los riesgosos bonos municipales de Puerto Rico. El comunicado de prensa con los enlaces individuales de cada orden lo pueden encontrar aquí.
Kyle Glazier y Lynn Hume publicaron el primer artículo relacionado a las ventas de denominaciones...
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...
Impuestos, Bonos Municipales de Puerto Rico y los Fondos UBS
(Oct 2014)
A la fecha hemos escrito extensamente sobre los fondos de bonos municipales UBS Puerto Rico. Pueden encontrar nuestra más reciente entrada al blog aquí. La singularidad del régimen impositivo de Puerto Rico sigue saliendo a colación y pensamos que una entrada al blog aclarando este asunto vale la pena.
Los residentes de Puerto Rico no pagan impuestos sobre el ingreso al gobierno federal pero pagan altos impuestos sobre el ingreso. Los puertorriqueños pagan una tasa impositiva marginal máxima...
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...
Enforcement Actions: Week in Review - September 26th, 2014
(Sep 2014)
SEC ENFORCEMENT ACTIONS
Court Enters Final Judgments Against CEO and Executive Vice President of Company Involved in Pump-And-Dump Scheme Involving Fictitious Buyout Offer
September 25, 2014 (Litigation Release No. 23092)
The SEC announced that the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts entered final judgments against Maximilien Arella, CEO, and Ian Morrice, the Executive Vice President, both of Spencer Pharmaceutical Inc. (a microcap pharmaceutical company). Permanent...
Monogram Residential Trust's Proposed Listing is Further Evidence That Even the Non-Traded REITs Winners Are Losers
(Sep 2014)
The non-traded REIT, Monogram Residential Trust, rebranded from the Behringer Harvard Multifamily REIT I this April, is "exploring a potential listing on a national securities exchange", Monogram's CEO Mark Alfieri wrote in a letter to investors last month. Monogram's managers and senior advisors are optimistic that such a liquidity event will "maximize shareholder value". They claim that the REIT's main problem has been a lack of monetization. We disagree.
We have analyzed all of Monogram's...
United Development Funding IV Left Investors $34.8 Million Worse Off
(Jun 2014)
On Wednesday last week, another non-traded REIT listed on a public exchange. United Development Funding IV (ticker: UDF), which sold as a non-traded REIT for $20 per share, closed its first day of trading on the NASDAQ at $19.60. As we have argued extensively in the past, we think that non-traded REITs are a very bad deal for investors, and UDF IV was no exception.
We have gone through all of UDF IV's SEC filings and applied the gross proceeds, distributions, and other cash flows to a liquid,...
FINRA Enforcement Actions: Month in Review
(Jun 2014)
MAY 2014 SELECTED FINRA ENFORCEMENT ACTIONS
FIRMS FINED
ABN AMRO Clearing Chicago LLC (CRD #14020, Chicago, Illinois)
ABN AMRO Clearing Chicago LLC consented to a censure and $95,000 fine for allegedly failing "to report short interest positions to the New York Stock Exchange and FINRA on certain settlement dates, and submitt[ing] to FINRA an inaccurate short-interest position report." FINRA found that the firm's supervisory system did not provide for supervision reasonably designed to achieve...
Non-traded REITs' Annualized Returns Were 4.82% Compared to Traded REITs' 10.44%.
(May 2014)
We have posted previously about how non-traded REITs which have had "liquidity events" have destroyed $27.7 billion in investor wealth compared to traded REITS. See our other blog posts on Non-Traded REITs. In this post, we calculate that the 27 non-traded REITs we discussed in prior posts have an internal rate of return (IRR) of 4.82%, which is 5.62 percentage points lower than the 10.44% IRR of a liquid, diversified REIT mutual fund over the same time period, with the same cash flows.
To...
