Articles Tagged with Puerto Rico Debt Downgrade

As we previously reported, a credit rating agency downgrade followed by a default or restructuring of Puerto Rico’s debt seems inevitable.  How did Puerto Rico end up here?  Unfortunately, its the same familiar Wall Street drama that is now perfectly mirroring the mortgage securities crisis experienced only six years ago.  Wall Street firms sell Puerto Rico bonds as safe, tax-free, high-yielding investments and politicians and policy makers take no interest in stopping the underwriting, issuance, and debt selling machine.  Moreover, firms know that by packaging unloved and unwanted municipal bonds and other assets into mutual funds the firms can sell speculative assets to retirees and other investors seeking income as conservative and diversified bond funds.

Firms such UBS, sold proprietary bond funds to customer such as the Puerto Rico Fixed Income Fund and the Puerto Rico Investors Tax-Free Fund series that invested up to 140% of their assets in Puerto Rico debt through the employment of leverage.  While UBS recommends that Puerto Rico residents should, in some cases, invest up to 100%+ of their assets in the Funds, UBS secretly recommends that UBS Puerto Rico, the firm’s island subsidiary, liquidate its own UBS bond fund holdings due to UBS  the overconcentration risk.  Thus, according to complaints filed against the firm, UBS’ recommendation to clients to invest in the funds was a conflict of interests with the firm’s own internal analysis that found the funds to be too risky.