MUNICIPAL & INFRASTRUCTURE FINANCE EXPERIENCE
Municipal Services & Select Municipal & Infrastructure Finance Transactions
SWS has managed over $1.4 trillion of municipal bonds in more than 5,000 transactions for the funding of education, housing, health services, transportation, utilities, capital facilities, economic development, redevelopment and general infrastructure projects. Through this experience, the firm has established itself as a pioneer in the municipal marketplace, consistently developing innovative ideas and structures to better align client financing goals with the dynamics of the capital markets and reaching new firm and industry milestones:
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The first MWBE to serve as bookrunning senior manager for a municipal bond deal over $1 billion in par amount
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The first MWBE to rank among the Top Ten U.S. underwriters of municipal bonds and regularly ranks in the Top 15 nationally as a senior-managing municipal underwriter
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Served as billing and delivery bookrunner for Los Angeles World Airports' $930 million transaction, the largest airport financing led by an MBE firm
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Served as senior and co-senior manager on Bond Buyer Deal of the Year Award-winning transactions every year since 2019
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Most recently, these include the City of Chicago’s Sales Tax Securitization Corp $1.7 billion Social Bonds transaction which won in the Midwest category, the State of Oregon’s $989 million General Obligation Bonds transaction which won in the Far West category, and the City of Atlanta’s $370 million Social Bonds transaction which won in the Southeast category
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Consistently rank as a top 10 senior managing underwriter of utility and transportation transactions nationally
Click here to contact our Municipal Public Finance Department.
Source for total deals and rankings: SDC – Refinitiv, an LSEG business
Underwriting
The public finance department is structured to maximize the value of the technical and execution services that we offer our clients. It is comprised of investment bankers with a variety of professional backgrounds, and combines extensive structuring and underwriting experience with a long history of innovation for the firm’s clients. SWS provides state-of-the-art in-house debt structuring and financial analysis capabilities. Our services include:
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Debt portfolio creation and monitoring of potential restructuring and refunding opportunities to provide ongoing advice for overall debt management;
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Tax-exempt and taxable debt structuring, including optimal bond sizing calculations utilizing fixed, stepped and zero coupons;
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Proprietary sizing and refunding applications, portfolio optimization calculations, and preparation of escrow and arbitrage compliance calculations necessary to optimize advance-refunding tran-sactions;
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Project financing strategies;
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Flow of funds models;
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Analysis of derivative products; and
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Call optimization strategies.
In addition to the above services, we keep our clients abreast of changes and trends in the municipal market. Our sophisticated market analytic tools assist both our buy-side clients as well as new issue municipal clients.
Municipal Sales & Trading
We are able to market bonds of every credit rating to suitable institutional and professional retail investors*. Blending professional retail with our traditional institutional distribution into a unified marketing plan enables us to market securities at attractive interest rates in all market conditions, often achieving interest rate savings that significantly exceed what other firms can accomplish. Read more on our Sales, Trading & Research page.
*The term “professional retail” refers to investors that serve as proxies for retail investors such as bank trust departments, investment advisors and firms representing investors with separately managed accounts.
Professional Retail
SWS also delivers services to professional retail buyers (SMA). In fact, we are a leading liquidity provider for highly rated municipal bond investors, especially in the SMA space. Over 50% of SWS' secondary market activity is with SMA, Private Wealth management and Money Management accounts. SWS' trading volume with these accounts in 2023 totaled over $15.8 billion. Additionally we are one of the market leaders in providing liquidity for "retail-sized" trades (<$500k). Since 2018, SWS has executed over 183,000 trades with a par amount of $200k or less, making up 85% of SWS' total number of trades.
SWS has an impressive track record leading financings
for major urban areas in the U.S.
