Fixed Income Market Structure Advisory Committee — Transparency Subcommittee

Summary Minutes of February 27, 2018 Call

The Transparency Subcommittee held a call on February 27, 2018 to discuss municipal bond market transparency and liquidity and the Subcommittee’s near- and long-term focus areas and deliverables.

The call convened at approximately 3:00 p.m. via telephone. The following Subcommittee Members were on the call:

Brian Archer
John Bagley
Carole Brown
Gilbert Garcia
Tom Gira
Scott Krohn
Kumar Venkataraman
Mihir Worah
Michael Heaney

The following staff from the Division of Trading and Markets were on the call:

David Shillman
David Dimitrious
Tom Eady
Michael Gaw
Molly Kim
Patrick Norton
Justin Pica
Ben Bernstein
Ted Uliassi

The following staff from the Office of Municipal Securities were also on the call:

Rebecca Olsen
Ahmed Abonamah

The following staff from the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis were also on the call:

Abby Kim
Michael Schihl

The first order of business was a report on the municipal securities market, including the transparency and liquidity thereof, from David Hammer of PIMCO and Kevin Danckwerth of Citibank. The Subcommittee agreed to invite additional municipal securities market participants to present to the Subcommittee on future calls

The next order of business was a discussion of the near-term focus areas and deliverables for the Subcommittee. The Subcommittee agreed to focus on whether block trading in the bond markets has been affected by transparency requirements. The Subcommittee decided to table a market participant survey and further pursue (1) research about the relationship between transparency requirements and block trades and (2) whether a potential pilot program to allow further data gathering and analysis regarding the relationship between transparency and block trading would be feasible and what the parameters of such a pilot program might be.

The final order of business was a discussion regarding collecting the Subcommittee members’ thoughts on longer term issues for the Subcommittee to focus on.

The call concluded at approximately 4:00 p.m.