General Information (Not Advice)
Firms are allowed to give general information to municipal entities without registering as a municipal advisor. This is because the definition of advice does not include general information given to a municipal entity. This is sometimes referred to as the general information exclusion.
Examples of what the SEC considers general information include:
•Information regarding a person’s professional qualifications and prior experience (e.g., descriptions of past municipal securities transactions)
•General market and financial information (e.g., market statistics regarding issuance activity for municipal securities, or current market interest rates or index rates for different types of bonds or categories of credits)
•Information regarding a financial institution’s currently available investments (e.g., the terms, maturities, and interest rates at which the financial institution offers these investments)
•Information requested by a municipal entity or obligated person regarding price quotes for investments that are available for purchase or sale in the market and meet criteria specified by the municipal entity
•Factual information describing various types of debt financing structures (e.g., fixed-rate debt, variable-rate debt, general obligation debt, debt sec