SEC's Disclosure Doctrine; Ignorance of Ratings is No Excuse, The Bond Buyer

The Bond Buyer

September 19, 2008

Robert Dean Pope, at the gathering of bond attorneys with the SEC's Philadelphia-based regional municipal securities counsel, comments on Securities and Exchange Commission's statement that municipal issuers must file material event notices when the ratings on their bonds are downgraded. Pope asked if the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board might be able to work with the rating agencies to feed all of the rating changes through the secondary market disclosure component of the Electronic Municipal Market Access, or EMMA, system. "It's almost a no brainer," Pope said, adding that "that direct feeds from the rating agencies to EMMA would result in a safer, simpler way of disclosing changes in bond ratings."

A bond lawyer with the firm's public finance group, Pope focuses his practice on public finance with related work in local government, securities, health care, tax and corporate trust law.