The longtime vice chairman of the New York City Industrial Development Agency’s board announced his resignation last week. Derek Bryson Park was appointed to the board in 2000 by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and became its vice chairman in 2001.
“I have been advised by industry friends and potential colleagues that it would be ill-advised for me to continue serving from one board to the next given my eventual transition into an industry that has little or no tolerance for any external distractions,” Park said in prepared remarks to the board at its monthly meeting.
Park said he would be working on a possible merger between two investment banks. He declined to identify the banks. He also said he expected to work with banks to remove “toxic” mortgage-backed securities from their balance sheets.
Park also resigned from the board of the New York City Capital Resource Corp., an issuer related to the IDA. He chaired both issuers’ audit committees.
Previously he served on the board of the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York and as a managing director at Cohane Rafferty Securities, LLC which was acquired by Lehman Brothers in 2002.
In 2006, Park gave the IDA’s acceptance speech when it won The Bond Buyer’s Deal of the Year Award for the sale of nearly $1.6 billion of bonds to finance new Major League Baseball stadiums for the Mets in Queens and the Yankees in the Bronx.
Also stepping down last week from the IDA board was Steven Devereaux, who served as the designee of Staten Island borough president James Molinaro beginning in 2008.
The CRC board last week gave final approval to the marketing of $19.8 million of recovery zone facility bonds on behalf of Arthur Management Corp., a subsidiary of St. Barnabas Community Enterprises Inc., to to help build a $25.7 million, five-story parking garage.
The garage will serve the St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx. The board approved the deal despite pending litigation brought by a union seeking to stop it.
Wells Fargo Capital Markets will serve as placement agent on the bonds, which will have a maximum maturity of 15 years and are expected to have a 7.5% interest rate.
