Smith's High Yield Municipal Bond Conference Highlights Spaceports and Distressed Credits
News related to:Smith's Research & Gradings · 2 min read
Smith's Research & Gradings, a leading independent municipal credit research firm, is hosting its annual High Yield Municipal Bond Conference in Greenwich. The event, which will examine the risks and opportunities in the municipal bond market, will feature discussions on spaceports, distressed credits, and new infrastructure projects.
The conference, which runs from [start date], will bring together municipal market leaders to discuss the latest trends and challenges in the sector. Terence Smith, CEO of Smith's Research & Gradings, highlighted the importance of understanding both the risks and the potential for innovation in high yield municipal finance.
Among the topics to be discussed are the potential for spaceports to become a new sector of the municipal market. Panelists will explore the use of newly authorized tax-exempt private activity bonds for launch facilities, mission-control centers, manufacturing campuses, testing facilities, and related infrastructure. This forward-looking session aims to provide insights into the emerging commercial space infrastructure and its potential impact on the municipal finance landscape.
The conference will also examine distressed and bankrupt municipal credits in traditional sectors such as charter schools, healthcare, tobacco bonds, Puerto Rico, higher education, senior living, and infrastructure funding. These discussions will help investors and policymakers understand the complexities of these sectors and make more informed decisions.
On October 20, the 2026 Smith's Phoenix Award will be presented to Miyoko Sato of Mintz. The award recognizes individuals whose leadership, professional achievements, and contributions have made a lasting impact on the high yield municipal bond sector.
Smith's Research & Gradings, founded in 1992, provides independent research, credit analytics, and market intelligence to institutional investors and other participants in the municipal and infrastructure finance markets. The firm's proprietary data connects the dots over the past three decades between event risks and expected recoveries based on expert engineering, cyber, and system-level surveillance. This allows decision-makers and policymakers to make more informed decisions about how to engineer better outcomes given potential losses from pre-determined events.
The full agenda and registration information are available at the conference website. Conference sponsors include BofA Securities, RBC Capital Markets, Faegre Drinker, GLC Advisors, McDermott Will & Schulte, Mintz, Computershare, Nixon Peabody, DSI Consulting, Moody's, Fitch Ratings, D.A. Davidson, S&P Global, Mesirow, HilltopSecurities, and Celadon.