MSRB Rule G-17 has been interpreted by the MSRB as requiring a broker or dealer (“broker”) to  disclose to its customer, at or prior to the time of trade of a municipal security, all material information about the transaction known by the broker, as well as material information about the security that is reasonably accessible to the market.  On February 11, 2013, the MSRB issued a notice of its proposal to consolidate some, but not all, of its multiple interpretive notices relating to the Rule G-17 “time of trade disclosure obligation” in a new Rule G-47. http://msrb.org/Rules-and-Interpretations/Regulatory-Notices/2013/2013-04.aspx

The proposed rule is not intended to alter the substance of a broker’s time of trade disclosure obligation, merely to make it easier to locate that substance in rule form rather than by reviewing a collection of G-17 interpretive notices previously issued by the MSRB, some of which deal with unrelated topics, as G-17 is a fair dealing rule of wide scope.  Facilitating the finding and reviewing of applicable legal requirements is a sensible goal, and it seems unlikely that there will be significant opposition to MSRB’s objective in proposing the “new” rule.

As is generally the case with any attempt to consolidate or summarize, comments on the proposed rule, which are due by March 12, 2013, are likely to focus on what is left out of the rule and on requests for clarification of items that have been unclear under the G-17 interpretations and remain unclear under the proposed rule.

A few preliminary observations on potential improvements to the proposed rule:

• The Rule G-47 disclosure obligation would apply to purchases and sales between a broker and its customer, whether unsolicited or recommended, and whether in a primary offering or secondary market transaction.  However, prior interpretations deem the time of trade disclosure obligation automatically satisfied if the customer is a “sophisticated municipal market professional” or “SMMP”.  This important exception deserves to be called up from the minor leagues of interpretation to the major leagues of the new rule.
• Rule G-47 provides a non-exhaustive list of potentially material information that must be disclosed by a broker at or prior to sale or purchase, but, beyond noting that such information may be provided “orally or in writing”, appears deliberately vague about permissible mechanisms for delivering material information.  Rule G-47 indicates that the public availability of material information through EMMA or other established industry sources does not relieve brokers of their obligation to make the required time of trade disclosures to a customer, and that a broker may not satisfy its disclosure obligation by directing a customer to an established industry source.  Though unstated in the proposed rule, presumably a broker can satisfy its obligation to disclose material features of the security by providing a copy of the official statement for the security, which is the primary source of such information, versus by attempting to synthesize, reword or isolate “material” information from immaterial information.  In circumstances where an official statement would include all available material information (which may be the case if there has been no material change to the basic features of the security or credit profile since the date of the official statement), it is unclear whether the Rule is intended to spare the customer the trouble of going to EMMA to review such material disclosure by forcing a broker to provide such disclosure directly to the customer, or whether the Rule's wording is merely intended to differentiate a generalized statement by the broker that “you can find all material information on EMMA” from a broker-provided link or links to specific EMMA disclosure for the applicable security that the broker has determined contains all required material information.  The MSRB might consider clarifying in the rule whether the provision that “a broker may not satisfy its disclosure obligation by directing a customer to an established industry source” is intended to require the broker to determine whether an established industry source such as EMMA in fact contains all material information at the time of trade (and, if not, to require the broker to supplement EMMA by providing missing material information available from other public sources), or whether it is a complete ban on use of any time of trade disclosure mechanism that does not create a record of whether the customer actually accessed the publicly available information to which the customer was referred by the broker.
• Proposed Rule G-47 lists 15 specific items that may be material in certain scenarios for purposes of the time of trade disclosure obligation.  This non-exhaustive list focuses primarily on technical features of the security, with the only listed “material” item relating to the underlying credit being item c, “[t]he credit rating or lack thereof, credit rating changes, credit risk of the municipal security, and any underlying credit rating or lack thereof.”  Although the specified items are consolidated from prior notices intended to emphasize the MSRB’s view that such items are or may be material, and are not intended to constitute a compendium of the most frequently material items, when assembled as a list in the proposed rule they highlight the incompleteness of the list.  It seems odd, for example, to list “the investment of bond proceeds” as a potentially material item, while omitting, for example, items such as whether the security is a general obligation, revenue or conduit bond, whether the interest is an AMT preference item and whether a conduit bond is secured by a mortgage and/or gross receipts lien.  The MSRB will need to consider whether half a list is better than none.