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Contact: Jennifer A. Galloway, Chief Communications Officer
               202-838-1500
               jgalloway@msrb.org

MSRB PUBLISHES BUDGET SUMMARY IN SUPPORT OF FINANCIAL TRANSPARENCY

WASHINGTON, DC – To further demonstrate its commitment to transparency and public accountability, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB), the market self-regulator, today released a budget summary for its fiscal year beginning October 1, 2017. The summary describes the alignment between the organization’s mission-driven activities and projected revenues and spending.

“Transparency as to the allocation of our resources is critical for an organization like the MSRB with a public-purpose mission,” said Lucy Hooper, Chair of the MSRB’s Board of Directors. “We are also using this opportunity to reiterate our commitment to a fair and equitable fee structure for regulated entities as well as our approach to managing organizational reserves.”

Ensuring appropriate revenue and expense levels and overall financial sustainability of the MSRB is the responsibility of the Board and senior management, who conduct rigorous annual budget planning, carefully manage expenses and recalibrate funding sources when necessary to more equitably allocate fees.

The MSRB’s 2018 budget is based on identified financial priorities—fair and equitable balance of fees, diversification of revenues, revenue expectations that account for volatile market activity and strict management of expenses. Each year the MSRB budgets and oversees expenses with the same integrity and rigor applied when pursuing its annual and strategic objectives.

Established Board policies address the management of reserves, and over the last three years, the MSRB has reduced reserves twice by providing $9 million in rebates to qualified registrants, as well as decreasing the rate of the underwriting fee—one of the organization’s largest sources of revenue—by 8.3% in 2016.

“The MSRB will continue to closely monitor reserves, looking not only to our current position but also to the future and projected trends,” said Hooper. “Know that we are dedicated to protecting the municipal securities market, managing resources responsibly and maintaining the financial strength of the organization.”

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) protects and strengthens the municipal bond market, enabling access to capital, economic growth, and societal progress in tens of thousands of communities across the country. The MSRB fulfills this mission by creating trust in our market through informed regulation of dealers and municipal advisors that protects investors, issuers and the public interest; building technology systems that power our market and provide transparency for issuers, institutions, and the investing public; and serving as the steward of market data that empowers better decisions and fuels innovation for the future. The MSRB is a self-regulatory organization governed by a board of directors that has a majority of public members, in addition to representatives of regulated entities. The MSRB is overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Congress.

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