Zions Bank has recently announced a new service called Zions Bank Retirement Resources, which provides customers with information on a variety of retirement considerations, such as wills, trusts, 401(k)s, IRAs and a host of other important topics.

Over the coming months, Zions Bank Retirement Resources along with Zions Direct and Zions Investment Services Group will be hosting a series of seminars on a variety of retirement subjects.

The next seminar will be held March 10 . . . read more

For the second time this year, Zions Direct Chairman W. David Hemingway was featured in the Wall Street Journal. The October 26, 2009 article examined Zions Direct’s bond offerings and the recent interest by investors towards purchasing bonds. The author also highlighted the growth in Zion Direct’s auction platform and bond pricing model, in addition to investigating the allure consumers are now finding in individual bonds (as compared to the traditional approaches of investing in fixed income). read more

On April 28, Zions Direct closed its first municipal bond offering on the auctions platform. At its close, participants had bid on nearly nine times the offered amount on the Manatee County, Florida bond with the highest bid asking for a premium price of more than 1½ % above the coupon. Because of the benefits of the modified Dutch auction model, all winning bids got a better price than the coupon amount as each walked away a yield greater than 4.251% on these seven-year municipal bonds.

For those taking those possible tax advantages on this bond, if we assume a 35% tax bracket, it would take a yield of 6.53% on a taxable security in order to get a similar after-tax equivalent yield.

Zions Direct Chairman W. David Hemingway was featured in a recent Wall Street Journal article examining the Zions Direct auction platform.

Zions Direct announces its first auction of secondary market municipal bonds. The auction will begin Monday, April 20, and will run for eight days. This innovative approach to selling municipal bonds allows retail and institutional investors to set the yield through a competitive bidding process. This is in contrast to the typical approach in which a broker/dealer sets the offering yield.

It turns out that this Internet thing is good for more than just sending emails, investing, and viewing weird home videos. And we know that we need to do better at using it to communicate with you.

Armed with that knowledge, we are starting a blog. Those of you in the know understand what a blog is—or at least you have an idea of a few out there—see the value in creating a communication tool where we can talk to you and you can talk to us. But to those who do not know, we’ll explain what it means for Zions and what our purpose will be.