Keynotes

Steven Grossman was elected in 2010 to the office of Treasurer and Receiver General for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He uses the full potential of the treasurer’s office to protect the public’s money, help create jobs, boost small businesses, and bring new standards of transparency and disclosure to state government. Prior to his election, Grossman spent 35 years as CEO of Grossman Marketing Group where in that time he grew the company’s revenues eightfold. He chairs the Advisory Board of Cambridge College and serves as an advisory board member of the Women’s Lunch Place. He was a founding board member of Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth (MassINC), a former campaign chair of Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and a founding board member of the Lenny Zakim Fund. Grossman is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School.

James Lebenthal is co-founder of Lebenthal & Co. LLC and the wealth and family office management firm, Alexandra & James. Both companies were started in partnership with his daughter Alexandra. After graduating from Princeton in 1949, Lebenthal began his career with dream-opportunities at Life Magazine, NBC, Disney, Ogilvy & Mather Advertising. During this time, his mother, Sayra, kept the Lebenthal family bond business going. In 1963, Lebenthal joined her selling odd lot municipal bonds to the little guy with a thousand dollars or so to invest at a time. By appearing in radio and TV commercials, Lebenthal put tax free municipal bonds within the reach and comprehension of the masses. He is the author of Confessions of a Municipal Bond Salesman and Lebenthal On Munis – Straight Talk About Tax Free Municipal Bonds For The Troubled Investor Deciding, “Yes…” or “No!” For his many years of service, Lebenthal has been recognized by The Municipal Forum and won lifetime achievement awards from the National Federation of Municipal Analysts and The Bond Market Association, predecessor to SIFMA.

Moderators and Presenters:

Andrew Ang is the Ann F. Kaplan professor of business at Columbia Business School and chair of the Finance and Economics Division. He is a financial economist whose work centers on understanding the nature of risk and return in asset prices across municipal and government bond markets, equities, investment management and portfolio allocation, and alternative investments. Ang is a research associate at the National Bureau of Research and serves as an associate editor for several leading journals. He has consulted for banks, hedge funds, asset managers, and other financial institutions and currently serves as advisor to Martingale Asset Management and the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund.

John Chalmers is associate professor of finance and Abbott Keller distinguished research scholar at the Charles H. Lundquist College of Business at the University of Oregon. He has been visiting associate professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and assistant professor at Virginia Tech. His expertise is focused in the areas of municipal bonds, mutual funds, individual investor behavior and asset pricing. Chalmers earned a BA in Economics from Middlebury College, an MS in Applied Economics and a PhD in Finance from the University of Rochester.

Tim Coffin is a senior vice president with Breckinridge Capital Advisors, a fixed income investment advisor managing over $16 billion with a primary focus on customized tax-exempt, taxable and sustainable municipal bond portfolios. He was previously a vice president at Fidelity Investments where he launched and managed the firm’s Municipal Finance Group, which managed average annual underwriting engagements in excess of $30 billion. He has also served as president of Corby Capital Markets and as an institutional salesman with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and RBC Dan Rauscher. Coffin has served as Governor of the Municipal Bond Club of Boston. He is a graduate of Hobart College.

Randy Cohen is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Cohen currently teaches investments, an elective course for MIT Sloan MBA students. His main research focus is the interface between the actions of institutional investors and price levels in the stock market. Previously, Cohen taught at Harvard Business School, most recently as an associate professor of finance. Prior to HBS, he worked as an actuarial management consultant specializing in pension plan asset and liability analysis. Cohen holds an AB in mathematics from Harvard College and a PhD in finance from the University of Chicago.

Robert Donahue is a managing director at Municipal Market Advisors (MMA). Prior to joining MMA, he oversaw new issue and secondary market analysis for municipal bond funds and insurance portfolios with more than $29 billion of combined assets at DWS Investments, Deutsche Asset Management. He has also worked as a portfolio manager and analyst at Fidelity Investments’ Fixed Income Division, where he was responsible for five municipal money market mutual funds totaling more than $6 billion in shareholder assets. Donahue is a graduate of College of the Holy Cross and received an MPA in State and Local Financial Management from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

Robert Doty is president and proprietor of AGFS, a private consulting firm. He has worked as a financial advisor, investment banker, bond counsel, underwriter counsel, issuer counsel, trustee counsel, and counsel to corporate issuers in financing transactions with an aggregate principal amount of several billions of dollars. He has served as a former general counsel to the Government Finance Officers Association; chair of the committee on economic development, taxation and finance for the International Municipal Lawyers Association; former member of the Board of Governors; and vice president of the National Association of Independent Public Finance Advisors. Doty represented the United States as a member of a delegation to discuss public finance concepts with Chinese officials. He received his law degree from Harvard Law School.

 

Joseph Fichera is the chief executive officer of Saber Partners, LLC and a visiting lecturer in public and international affairs at Princeton University. He serves as senior advisor to The Williams Capital Group, an independent securities brokerage, investment management and financial services firm. His areas of expertise include corporate governance, financial markets, capital markets finance and effective regulation. His professional experience has taken him to Smith Barney, Harris Upham, Bear Stearns, the U.S. Department of Housing and Development, and the State Department. Fichera has advised many federal and state entities. His writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Yale Management Review and Barron’s, and he is a guest commentator on financial news media, including CNN, Fox, Bloomberg and NPR. He is a graduate of Princeton University and received an MBA from Yale University.

 

Angela Gore is an Associate Professor of accountancy at the George Washington University’s School of Business, and a research affiliate with the George Washington Institute of Public Policy. The 2010 recipient of the AAA/Deloitte Wildman medal for the most significant contribution to accounting practice, Gore’s research focuses on the intersection of accounting, economics, and public policy. Her recent research examines the relation between public sector unions and accounting transparency, public sector manager severance packages, and the disclosure transparency in the municipal bond market.

W. Bartley Hildreth is professor and former dean at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University and editor-in-chief of the Municipal Finance Journal. Hildreth previously taught at Wichita State University, LSU, and Kent State. He has served on the National Advisory Council on State and Local Budgeting and the Governmental Accounting Standards Advisory Council; received two gubernatorial appointments to serve on the board of the Kansas Development Finance Authority; chaired a state-wide tax review committee; served on several GFOA national committees; and acted as Director of Finance for the City of Akron, Ohio. Hildreth received the 2008 national award for lifetime scholarly achievement in the field of public budgeting and financial management. He is a graduate of the University of Alabama. He received an MPA from Auburn University at Montgomery and a PhD from the University of Georgia.

Marc Joffe is principal consultant at Public Sector Credit Solutions as well as a consultant for PF2 Securities Evaluations, Inc. He researched and co-wrote Kroll Bond Rating Agency’s 2011 US municipal bond default study, and recently published an open source public sector credit framework for estimating default probabilities on government securities. Previously, Joffe was a senior director at Moody’s Analytics, where he held product and technology management roles related to the company’s corporate and structured credit analytic tools. He earned his BA and MBA from New York University, and is completing his MPA at San Francisco State University.

Andrew Kalotay is the founder of Andrew Kalotay Associates. His firm provides high-speed, high-precision bond and mortgage-backed security analytics to some of the most sophisticated market participants. Kalotay is a leading authority on bond valuation and on the practice of debt management. He is a prolific contributor to the literature on fixed income topics such as bond refunding and the use and misuse of interest rate derivatives. He has worked with Salomon Brothers, Bell Laboratories and AT&T. Kalotay taught at Wharton, Columbia and Fordham University and directed the first graduate Financial Engineering program in the U.S. at Polytechnic University. He holds a BS and MS from Queen's University and a PhD from the University of Toronto, all in mathematics.

Tom Kozlik is a director and municipal credit analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott where he advises retail and institutional clients about the strengths and weaknesses of municipal market credit profiles. His work has been quoted in various periodicals such as the Wall Street Journal, and he has appeared as a guest municipal credit expert on Bloomberg, CNBC and Fox Business News. Prior to joining Janney, Kozlik worked with UBS and Bear Stearns. He is a graduate of Schreyer’s Honors College at the Pennsylvania State University and earned a Masters from the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dan Li is an economist at the Federal Reserve Board. She monitors the municipal bond and corporate bond markets for the Board, and studies the microstructure of the OTC market in her research. Her past and current research focuses on the role of financial intermediaries in price discovery, price setting, market quality in illiquid OTC markets, and broker-dealer's role in the financial crisis. She holds a PhD in financial economics from Carnegie Mellon University.

Martin Luby is an assistant professor at DePaul University’s School of Public Service. He has held faculty positions at Ohio State University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Luby’s research focuses on the motivations and impacts of different public sector financial management practices as a means of better understanding public managers and public organizations, and on the development of specific emerging public finance practices such as infrastructure public-private partnerships and debt-related derivatives. Prior to academia, Luby worked in the public finance industry as an investment banker and finance consultant to state and local governments at Scott Balice Strategies and Bear Stearns. He received a PhD in public affairs from Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

Colin MacNaught is assistant treasurer for debt management in the Massachusetts State Treasurer’s Office, where he is responsible for all of the Commonwealth’s short-term and long-term borrowing needs. Prior to joining the State Treasury, he worked as an associate director at Standard & Poor’s where he evaluated and rated a number of states along the east coast, and as a specialist in S& P’s interest rate swap sector. MacNaught earned his MPP from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. His thesis on reforming the Massachusetts School Building Program was used as the basis for the creation of the new independent authority.

Justin Marlowe is associate professor in the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington. His specialty is public financial management, with an emphasis on public capital markets, governmental accounting, and financing public-private partnerships. He has consulted for a variety of organizations including the Internal Revenue Service, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, and Washington State Treasurer. He is a Certified Government Financial Manager and holds a PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Christopher Mier is the chief strategist and director of Loop Capital’s Analytical Services Division (ASD). Under Mier’s direction, the ASD has built two proprietary option valuation models, as well as econometric models to forecast SIFMA, municipal bond volume, and other variables of interest. Mier has previously worked as institutional portfolio manager in the Municipal Bond Department at MFS Investment Management; portfolio manager of numerous municipal funds at Scudder Kemper Investments; and held various posts at Comerica Bank in Detroit, including credit analyst, portfolio manager and trader in the Funds Management Department. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and holds a MA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

Todd Milbourn is on the faculty of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. His research and teaching interests center around corporate finance issues, with a particular focus on CEO compensation, corporate credit ratings and valuation. He has published widely on these topics in financial and managerial journals and has co-written an executive-level book on corporate finance. Milbourn has consulted and lectured on corporate finance issues for a variety of organizations, including many Fortune 500 companies, global investment banks and consultancy firms. Milbourn is a graduate of Augustana College and holds a PhD in Finance from Indiana University.

Bart Mosley is a principal and chief investment officer of Alprion Capital Management LP and serves as co-president of Trident Municipal Research, a joint venture between Alpion and Arbor Research and Trading, Inc. Mosley has 25 years experience in the fixed-income markets, having formerly served as a managing director and head of the Municipal Proprietary Trading Desk at UBS, as a senior trader on Citi’s proprietary trading desk as well as other positions in the municipal bond and corporate bond markets. Mosley received a BS in physics from the University of Texas at Dallas. He also contributed the chapter on Municipal Arbitrage and Tender Option Bonds in The Handbook of Municipal Bonds, Feldstein & Fabozzi, Editors (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2008). 

Gabriel Petek is a senior director in Standard & Poor’s State and Local Government group. He also serves as a deputy criteria officer for U.S. public finance. Prior to joining S&P, Petek worked as a budget analyst at the City of Boston’s office of budget management. He is a member of the National Federation of Municipal Analysts (NFMA); an advisor to the GFOA’s committee on governmental budgeting and fiscal policy; and sits on the board of the California Society of Municipal Analysts, the local affiliate of the NFMA. He is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University and holds an MPP from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Petek holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and is an active member of the CFA Society of San Francisco.

Lori Raineri Lori Raineri founded Government Financial Strategies after having worked as an investment banker. She is the author of more than two-dozen articles and publications and is in high demand as a public speaker. Raineri is a Certified Independent Public Finance Advisor and a Certified Fraud Examiner. She has served on the Board of the National Association of Independent Public Finance Advisors and has developed long-range capital financing plans for hundreds of public agencies. During her career, Raineri has been personally involved in the planning and structuring of well over seven billion dollars of financing. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and received her MS in Financial Analysis from the University of San Francisco.

Elizabeth Risik is an assistant professor of finance at Webster University’s George Herbert Walker School of Business and Technology. Her areas of teaching include financial strategy, mergers & acquisitions and principles of finance. Risik’s research focuses on corporate finance, mergers & acquisitions, options pricing, behavioral finance and mutual funds. She is a graduate of Michigan State University and received her MS in finance and a PhD in finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Mark Robbins is a professor and head of the department of public policy at the University of Connecticut. He publishes in the areas of state and local government debt and finances, and citizen preferences for taxation and spending. In addition to his research and teaching, he has served on the Government Accounting Standards Board advisory committee, the Government Finance Officers Association debt policy committee, and the Commission on Peer Review and Accreditation of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration.

Johan Rosenberg is Chairman of Blue Rose Capital Advisors. He has more than two decades of financial advisory experience, first at a national nonprofit organization providing funding to community developers in disadvantaged communities and then at two national advisory firms. With a vast network of contacts in the financial services domain, Rosenberg monitors new products and trends in other sectors, exploring their application to the needs of his clients. He also follows legal and regulatory changes, developing innovative products and services in anticipation of his clients’ evolving requirements. Rosenberg is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and holds an MBA with concentrations in finance and accounting from the University of Saint Thomas. He earned a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) designation from the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst Association.

Erik Sirri is a professor of finance at Babson College. His research interests include the interaction of securities law and finance; securities market structure; investment management; and capital markets. He is formerly the director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where he was responsible to the Commission for matters relating to the regulation of stock and option exchanges, national securities associations, brokers, dealers, clearing agencies, transfer agents, and credit rating agencies. He also served as the Commission’s chief economist and was an assistant professor of finance at the Harvard Business School. Sirri is a graduate of the California Institute of Technology and received an MBA from the University of California, Irvine and a PhD in Finance from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Winthrop Smith is the president and founder of Win Analytics LLC, an independent company of finance experts. The firm provides litigation support, analysis, and research to participants in structured finance and related markets. Smith’s career has centered on quantitative finance but has many facets: investment banker, financial advisor, expert witness, conference speaker, writer, programmer, modeler, analyst, teacher, mathematician, and inventor. He has been CFO of a $7 billion education finance company. Smith produces The Well-Tempered Spreadsheet, an informative blog about financial modeling and mathematics. He holds an MS in mathematical finance from Christ Church College, Oxford University. He is an affiliate member of the CFA Institute and of the CFA Society of Colorado.

Michael Stanton is publisher of The Bond Buyer, the leading news source covering the municipal finance marketplace with more than 15,000 daily readers nationwide. In this position, he supervises all business operations, including circulation, advertising, conferences, and custom media. Prior to being named publisher, he was the program manager for The Bond Buyer Conferences, and earlier served in several positions in the newsroom, including Editor-in-Chief. He is a graduate of Columbia University and received an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Anne Van Praagh is managing director and chief credit officer for Public Sector Ratings at Moody’s Investor Service. Her responsibilities include improving quality of credit standards and rating methodologies and conducting broad portfolio monitoring activities for sovereign, sub-sovereign and US public finance ratings. She has formerly worked on a variety of teams within Moody’s US Public Finance Group, including as vice president in the states and infrastructure ratings team, as well as as a public finance banker at Morgan Stanley. She has also worked for the US Federal Government, both at the Office of Management and Budget and at the Department of Defense. Van Praagh is a graduate of George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and received an MA from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Alex Whalley is assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Merced. Alex’s research focuses on public economics, innovation and economic history. Recent research has explored how city governance structures affect the costs of public financing and police hiring, the impact of public investments on air pollution and local economic growth, and housing bubbles on the size of city governments. His research has received financial support from the National Science Foundation and the National Bureau of Economic Research. Whalley graduated from the University of Western Ontario in 1998, earned an M.A. in Economics from the University of British Columbia in 1999 and completed his doctorate in Economics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2006.