Overview
Robinson+Cole has provided bond counsel services for securities offerings by states, municipalities, public authorities, and agencies for more than 60 years. As one of the first nationally recognized bond counsel firms in the country, we have been listed in The Bond Buyer's Municipal Marketplace (Red Book) since the early 1940s. We often rank among the leaders, both nationally and regionally, as bond counsel and underwriters' counsel.
Our Services
We provide bond counsel opinions on the following types of obligations:
We handle all of the documentation required for bond issuances, including the following:
In addition, we represent our clients in numerous actions:
Our Team
Our Public Finance Group comprises an integrated team of professionals dedicated to this specialized area and has traditionally been a significant practice group at our firm. We have our own dedicated securities and tax practitioners and can call on the diverse resources of our firm to respond to all situations.
Robinson+Cole brings to the role of bond counsel an unmatched municipal finance experience. We have served as counsel to underwriters, credit enhancers, trustees, and investors on numerous issues over decades of development in the public finance marketplace.
Our lawyers provide legal representation for tax-exempt and taxable financings as bond counsel for over 60 cities, towns, and other municipal entities in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, ranging from small towns functioning under the New England town meeting form of government to large cities with active, large capital budget issues. We also serve as counsel to underwriters and trustees.
In addition to our general obligation bond practice, we have served as bond counsel to cities, towns, and authorities in connection with the issuance of revenue bonds to finance numerous capital projects, including cultural facilities, economic development projects, and housing projects.
Our Public Finance Group is knowledgeable in innovative financing techniques that reflect the marketplace, including these areas:
The firm has also been actively involved in numerous advance refundings that are structured to enable issuers to achieve net present value debt service savings.
Statistics alone do not adequately measure the value a law firm brings to any client relationship or transaction. In public finance, there is no substitute for experience. We have worked with fiscally distressed communities under adverse circumstances. We have worked with our
clients through periods of high interest rates, which spurred tax-exempt commercial paper programs and variable rate demand debt. We have also worked with our clients through periods of relatively low interest rates on refundings to capture debt service savings. We are well versed in the complex tax issues presented by refundings and other innovative financing techniques and in the use of exempt facility bonds to spur economic development and meet public policy goals.
The comprehensive nature of our Public Finance Group gives our lawyers an exceptional understanding of municipal disclosure requirements under these standards:
Robinson+Cole's approach to the delivery of bond counsel services enables us to deliver the highest-quality legal services efficiently and cost-effectively. Issuers, in a highly competitive environment, attest to the quality of our service and the reasonableness of our counsel fees by returning to Robinson+Cole for their municipal finance and bond counsel needs. In fact, a recent survey of the firm's clients conducted by Altman Weil, Inc., found that all of the public finance respondents were "completely satisfied" (the highest of several possible choices) with the overall quality of service received from the firm and the Public Finance Group, particularly in the areas of communication and responsiveness, quality of service, and overall knowledge of the subject.
Represent the State of Connecticut as tax counsel on the issuance of over $16.2 billion of general obligation bonds and notes, including refunding bonds, economic recovery notes, working capital financings, general obligation bonds issued as qualified 501(c)(3) bonds, and bank credit facilities.
Represented a recreational facilities authority as bond and special counsel for the issuance of two series of lease revenue bonds totaling $62.4 million to finance a double-A minor league baseball stadium, including formation of the authority, advice regarding lease financing structure, drafting trust agreement and lease documents and complex tax analysis of private payments.
Representation of Westchester County Industrial Development Agency concerning a tax incentives project to locate a large pharmaceutical research corporation in a vacant biotech complex in Greenburgh, New York, resulting in 550 jobs retained or created in Westchester County.
