Illinois And SEC Settles Case on Underfunded Pensions

On Monday March 11th, the State of Illinois settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission on charges that it misled investors in its bonds between 2005 and 2009. The case centred on claims that the state did not correctly inform investors about the short falls in its retirement funds when it sold debt. According to a Bloomberg article, Illinois is still being penalized on the bond market, with investors demanding 1.3 percentage points of extra yield in order to own the State’s bonds. Illinois’s State pension funds are still facing severe funding problems, and now the market knows it. The…