The Bond Buyer

What Is The Bond Buyer?

The Bond Buyer is a trade publication for members of the municipal bond industry that began as a daily newspaper over 100 years ago and now provides sophisticated real-time market data via a subscription-based digital version. 

Understanding The Bond Buyer

The newspaper launched in 1891 as The Daily Bond Buyer in New York City. It serves the entire municipal bond industry with a daily paper and subscription-based website that publishes intraday breaking news and archives. The print version of The Bond Buyer is released five days a week, while the digital version is updated continuously throughout the business day.

The Bond Buyer is a subsidiary of Arizent, which also publishes American Banker. Arizent, formerly SourceMedia, Inc., was previously owned by Thomson Corporation, now Thomson Reuters Corporation, before being sold to Investcorp, a Bahrain private equity firm, in 2004. In 2014, Arizent was sold to Observer Capital, another private equity firm founded by Joseph Meyer.

The Bond Buyer takes a regional approach to covering the industry. It includes developments in the Midwest, Northeast, Far West, Southwest, and Southeast United States, as well as the Caribbean region. The Bond Buyer also focuses on the economic policies of the federal government, particularly the Federal Reserve Board, and how its policies affect municipalities and their debt offerings. The newspaper maintains bureaus in Chicago, Florida, Dallas, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.

In September 2017, The Bond Buyer announced a partnership with Municipal Bond Information Services (MBIS) to deliver real-time market data to subscribers through the Bond Buyer Data Workstation. This service is designed to enhance the website’s industry coverage and analysis by packaging it with sophisticated market data, similar to the service offered by Bloomberg.

The Bond Buyer Legal Notices Section

Another critical service provided by The Bond Buyer is the Legal Notices section. The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) requires bond issuers to publish announcements of new bond issues or amendments to existing bonds. The Bond Buyer's Legal Notices section provides a directory of current offerings, as well as links to a notice of sale for each issuance. Other announcements listed in the section include notices of refunding, bankruptcies, tender offers, and offers to repurchase bonds.

The regional approach of The Bond Buyer is reflected in a series of annual conferences which the paper hosts around the country. These events tend to focus either on municipal bond issues in a particular region or a sector of the national bond market — leadership, law, and public finance are recent examples.