Public & Project Finance
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- Education Financing
- Healthcare Nonprofit Corporation Financing
- Municipal Swaps & Other Derivative Products
- Real Estate
- Tax
- Transportation Financing
Overview
Accessing the capital markets can be a frightening proposition for the most sophisticated of cities and the most entrepreneurial of companies. Having someone by your side who understands the challenges you face and the opportunities that are available, and who can help structure the financing in a way that is appealing to investors, can make the process easier.
Cozen O’Connor has one of the most active public and project finance practices in the mid-Atlantic region. We were recently recognized by Thomson Reuters as the number one underwriters’ counsel in New Jersey and the number two bond counsel in Pennsylvania by number of transactions.
CREATIVE SOLUTIONS TO YOUR FINANCING NEEDS
The attorneys in our public and project finance practice are experienced in all types of finance transactions, including:
- Tax-exempt and taxable financings
- Debt restructurings
- Off-balance sheet financings
- Securitizations
- Municipal swaps and other derivative products
Over the past several years, our attorneys have closed over $8 billion in bond financings for a variety of clients, including
- Underwriters
- Developers
- Municipalities
- School districts
- Government agencies
- Borrowers
- Lenders
- Hospitals
- Nonprofits
- Trustees
- Swap counterparties
Our attorneys work closely with attorneys from our health law, real estate, bankruptcy and tax practices to provide cross-disciplinary and creative solutions for transactional clients.
EDUCATION
Having served as special counsel to the School District of Philadelphia and bond counsel to the Hatboro-Horsham School District, we have a sense of the educational and financial challenges facing the nation's schools. One of our partners has been engaged to rewrite Pennsylvania's Charter School Law. Another served as executive director of the New Jersey Educational Facilities Authority, helping colleges and universities to receive $1 billion of tax-exempt financing over a four-year period. And, we are working with independent secondary schools and charter schools to help them access the debt markets more efficiently. The firm has served as bond counsel or underwriter's counsel to the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency in over $1 billion of bond issues, including its first taxable deal. We are firmly committed to helping educational institutions access the capital markets efficiently to free up funds for teacher salaries and building improvements.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
For our major urban areas to survive, entrepreneurial companies need to have sufficient incentive to locate there. When a Pittsburgh-based child care company decided to open a center in Philadelphia, we helped them obtain funding from both a group that invests Community Reinvestment Act money in job-creation efforts and from local government. The result: the company is now the largest private child care company in Pennsylvania with more than 20 centers in Philadelphia alone. It employs more than 300 people, and is expanding into the Midwest. We also helped a start-up manufacturing company obtain financial support from four governmental agencies for the first project in Camden's Empowerment Zone.
HEALTHCARE
We have worked on numerous financings for healthcare entities, including hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Examples include:
- Represented the underwriters in structuring bond financing for six assisted living facilities in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, including a new $54 million campus for the Philadelphia Geriatric Center through the issuance of unrated tax-exempt bonds
- Served as bond counsel to a hospital in central Pennsylvania for which the bonds were sold over the Internet
- Represented a major hospital system in assembling a healthcare network financed with tax-exempt bonds
SPORTS FACILITIES
We represented the underwriter on the $112 million commercial paper financing to acquire the sites for the new stadiums for the Philadelphia Phillies and the Philadelphia Eagles. We also served as special counsel to the city of Philadelphia on the $304 million bond financing to construct the stadiums themselves. In New Jersey, we represented the borrower in the permanent financing for a new baseball stadium for the Camden Riversharks. We also created a pension fund investment vehicle to purchase a controlling interest in a major league baseball team.
FINANCIAL RESTRUCTURING
Serving as bond counsel, we assisted a financially distressed municipality in reducing its worker's compensation liability through a tax-exempt financing in the second such deal done in the Mid-Atlantic region. We also have been hired by the trustees on two defaulted assisted living projects to negotiate a forbearance agreement with bondholders to allow the facilities to continue to operate.
OFF-BALANCE SHEET FINANCINGS
The challenge for some bond financings is to create a structure that allows the project to be financed on a stand-alone basis. We represent a major utility financing a $42 million hot and cold water system for an Atlantic City casino through the New Jersey Economic Development Authority. Similarly, we are working on a large senior living project affiliated with the Jewish Geriatric Center in Cherry Hill, New Jersey for the community's elderly. Both bond issues attempt to keep the corporate parent's balance sheet unencumbered by the project.