Reference at Newman Library

New database: Mergent Bondviewer for Corporate and Municipals

Today, Mike Waldman has added Mergent Bondviewer to  the Newman Library databases.

This database includes both U.S. corporate and municipal bonds.  This is the first time we have had access to extensive municipal bond information online in the library.  Bonds and notes are promises to repay money  that has been borrowed with interest, at specific time periods.   They do not convey ownership in a company or in a municipality.  Active issues are those in which some debt is still outstanding.  Inactive issues have been repaid.

There is very good help available on the database.  I have learned the following from the help, and asking our vendor representative for details:

Corporate or Municipal Portfolios can be created to save search results.  A maximum of three portfolio per email address  can be saved at one time. Maximum number of issues in any portfolio is 200. Use Baruch email address to create portfolio.

Here’s a description for the library’s web page.

Includes active and inactive U.S. corporate bonds, municipal bonds, and retail notes, and offers ratings, historical pricing, summary of issue’s covenants and provisions, and portfolio tracking. Limited coverage through 1950; extensive coverage begins in 1993. To access, click on Enter Bondviewer. Use Baruch email address to set up maximum of three portfolios per email address. For individual companies, long term debt information also included in Company Details through Mergent Online database.

This  information was provided by Mergent:

Right now there are roughly 273,846 securities going out to customers in the corporate database.  There are about 2,659,445 maturities (around 278,352 total issues containing those maturities) for the muni side.

Corporate Issue Inclusion Criteria: the database includes publicly underwritten corporate securities issued in the United States: Yankees (U.S. dollar-denominated securities issued by foreign issuers), U.S. agencies, supranational securities, convertible bonds, Short, Medium and General Term Notes (Notes began in September 1993); high yield, adjustable rate securities, ESOP securities, underwritten exchange offer securities, equipment leased-back securities, strips (not secondary market derivatives); and mortgage-backed agency securities. In addition, Rule 144A issues (including non-U.S. dollar denominated securities) are included in the data base on a best-efforts basis.

The database does not track publicly traded bonds that are issued outside of the United States, including Canadian, foreign bonds or Eurobonds (securities registered in Europe, but issued by U.S. firms). At this time the database also does not include secondary insured remarketed bonds nor certificates of deposit; municipal securities, REMICs, CMOs, PASS-THRUs, PAY-THRUs or other Asset Backed securities.

Although the database does have some publicly traded bonds issued outside of the United States, we do not have a provider for this information. If we come across an issue of this type, and are able get the information, the security may be added to the database.

There are a handful of securities in the database from the late 1800’s through 1950. Limited coverage starts in 1950 with the number of securities representing each year thereafter growing almost exponentially. Extensive coverage begins in 1993.

Municipal bond coverage—which has not previously been available in any of our databases:

Municipal Bonds (Coverage of 2,659,445 bonds)

 

The following types of bonds are in Mergent’s coverage for Municipal Bonds:

All General Obligation Bonds including short and long term notes including taxable bonds

  1. All Revenue Bonds including short and long term notes including taxable bonds
  2. All Variable Rate Bonds including bonds which have a daily, weekly, monthly…etc reset.  As well as Auction Rate, Floating Rate, Adjustable Rate and Index Linked Bonds.  Coupons are not reported on Index Linked Bonds or Variable Bonds in the daily, weekly, monthly or adjustable modes.
  3. All Derivative Bonds on a best effort basis
  4. All Zero Coupon Bonds including Capital Appreciation, Deferred Interest, Compound Interest, Stripped Principal
  5. All Build America Bonds and Recovery Zone Economic Bonds (except for tax-credit bonds) including make-whole calls. (only for 2009 & 2010)
  6. Qualified School Construction Bonds (If not a Tax-Credit)
  7. Others – Certificates of Participation, Certificates of Obligation, Tax Anticipation Notes, and Bond Anticipation Notes…etc.
  8. Remarketed Bonds including Tender Data
  9. Hospital, Industrial, Serial, Term, Housing, Education, and Healthcare Bonds are in coverage
  10. New Issue Bond Program Bonds
  11. All Prerefunded, Unrefunded and Secondary Insurance CUSIPs.

The following types bonds are not in Mergent’s coverage for Municipal Bonds:

 

  1. 144A’s of any type
  2. Commercial Paper (unless there is a valid CUSIP)
  3. Qualified Zone Academy Bonds (QZAB).
  4. Any type of Bond which is only paid out as a Tax-Credit
  5. Bank Bonds
  6. Some Private Type Deals

Before I became a librarian I worked as legal assistant in a public finance department of a Minneapolis law firm so if you have any questions about municipal bonds, or other offerings, please let me know.

 

 

 

Leak Near Reference Desk

Buildings & Grounds has been notified concerning a leak in the roof. Rain is leaking and falling in front of the Reference Desk. Currently, there is a recycling bin on the carpet to catch the rain. An orange cone and a yellow “caution: wet floor” sign have been placed around the recycling bin.

Audit Analytics as Source for Info on Company Executives, Board Members, Compensation

For a number of student projects, they are looking for compensation of executives and members of the board of directors.  This information can be found on a number of our databases–historically on the Corporate Library, and searching proxies on Mergent, Edgar Online I-Metrix. Thomson Research, and the SEC site.

Audit Analytics is also a very good source for this information.  You can search by public company name or ticker symbol.  Under the Governance and Compensation tabs, you can locate the names, ages, positions of executives and board members, committees on which they serve, any other board(s) they serve on, and their compensation for attending board meetings (as well as their attendance record at such meetings).  The source of the information is provided, such as the proxy filing, or an 8-K filing.

Changes in executives and board members are also indicated, with the source of the information, and the reason for the change.  For example, this week I did a workshop in which I showed the students AEO, whose ceo recently announced his retirement and the head of the audit committee had submitted his resignation citing “too many commitments.”

Trial to World Scholar: Latin America and the Caribbean

We have a CUNY-wide trial to World Scholar until the end of May. It is valid on campus only.

This is a new product from Gale that focuses on Latin America and the Caribbean. It contains a wide variety of historical material, at least some of it hard to find. One interesting collection are pamphlets created by various popular Brazilian groups from 1966 to 1986, which were instrumental in bringing about a transition to democracy. As far as I know, this was only available in CD-ROM format in the past.

It also contains a number of historical statistics, even in the areas of business, that I don’t think we find in any of our current resources. It does offer the possibility of having text read to the user, although the voice-machine seems to be more fluent in Spanish than in Portuguese.

This trial is in conjunction with the trial to the Latin American Weekly Report. Please share you comments here or feel free to email me.