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Puerto Rico’s first bond issue since the commonwealth defaulted on a debt payment has been pushed out to Thursday at the earliest as investors evaluate the risk of the island’s restructuring plans, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. “It’s just to give investors time to do their work on the credit,” said Lyle Fitterer, who helps oversee $38 billion of municipal securities, including Puerto Rico debt, at Wells Capital Management in Menomonee Falls, Wis. Fitterer had been in contact with underwriters of the securities. The $750 million issue by the Puerto Rico Aqueduct & Sewer Authority, known as PRASA, had been tentatively scheduled to be priced yesterday, according to a presentation to investors last week.

Puerto Rico’s main water utility plans to sell $750 million of revenue bonds, the first debt offering from the financially struggling Caribbean island since it defaulted on securities sold by one of its agencies last week, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The deal may price as soon as next week. It will follow the Public Finance Corp.’s failure to make a full bond payment on Aug. 3 and comes just weeks before the commonwealth is set to propose a plan for restructuring its $72 billion of debt. Melba Acosta, the island’s top debt chief, doesn’t foresee the water agency reorganizing its obligations in such a move. The utility’s sale will test Puerto Rico’s ability to access the capital markets. Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla in June said that the U.S. territory can’t afford to repay what it owes as the population falls and the economy struggles to grow. Its bond prices have dropped amid speculation about the scale of the losses facing investors.

After openly acknowledging on Monday that it had not made a $58 million bond payment, the Puerto Rico quietly disclosed in a financial filing later that afternoon that it had temporarily stopped making contributions of $92 million a month into a fund that is used to make payments on an additional $13 billion in bond debt, the New York Times reported today. A small payment from the fund is due on Sept. 1. Unlike the bond payments that went into default on Monday, the ones coming due are on general obligation bonds — the kind many investors have been led to believe would never go into default because the issuer’s full faith, credit and taxing authority stand behind them. Puerto Rico issued such bonds over the years to raise money for a variety of government projects, and investors bought them eagerly because the island’s constitution explicitly guaranteed that such bonds would be paid.

Atlantic City had its debt rating cut deeper into junk by Standard & Poor’s, which said the New Jersey gaming hub has no “clear plan” to address its fiscal woes, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The municipality, which has been run by an emergency manager since January, was reduced three steps to B, the fifth level into junk, and may be lowered further, the ratings company said yesterday. Since Emergency Manager Kevin Lavin released a report in March citing the potential for deferred debt payments and job cuts, there has been no “additional clarity” on how the city can address its $101 million budget deficit and eroding tax base, Timothy Little, an S&P analyst, wrote in a release. Bankruptcy protection may be a “potential course of action” if as yet unimplemented solutions are unsuccessful, Little said. Atlantic City’s finances haven’t changed since May, when it sold securities with an S&P ranking of A-, the fourth-lowest investment grade, Michael Stinson, the city’s revenue and finance director, said yesterday.

Puerto Rico defaulted on a $58 million bond payment yesterday, a risky move that seemed to intensify the pressure on creditors for broader debt renegotiation, but might also make future borrowing far more difficult, the New York Times reported today. Whether Puerto Rico would make the payments was a subject of intense speculation among legal and financial experts for days as yesterday’s deadline approached. Although the island made a payment on the interest of about $628,000, it said it lacked the funds to pay the full amount. Puerto Rico is carrying more than $72 billion in debt, and that has raised serious questions about its financial future. Puerto Rico’s governor, Alejandro García Padilla, has called the total debt “unpayable” and is calling for a broadly based debt moratorium; details are to be released on Sept. 1. But some big institutional bondholders are disputing the idea that a global restructuring is necessary and are warning that unilateral actions by Puerto Rico will cause disruption and pain on the island, similar to the dislocations in Greece.