The board of New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Wednesday approved four bond counsel firms and one disclosure firm with a goal of involving more minority- and women-owned businesses.
Nixon Peabody LLP, Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, Bryant Rabbino LLP and D. Seaton and Associates received bond counsel appointments while Hawkins Delafield & Wood LLP will serve as disclosure counsel.
The board also established a panel of 11 approved law firms or teams from which underwriters for MTA financing transactions will select.
For several years, MTA, one of the largest municipal issuers with nearly $35 billion of debt, engaged Hawkins Delafield and Nixon Peabody by rotation.
"However, instead of two full-service firms serving as bond counsel, MTA will create two bond-counsel teams, each consisting of one full-service firm and one M/WBE firm," authority general counsel Jerome Page wrote the board. Within each of the bond counsel teams, said Page, work will be allocated with MTA input.
Hawkins Delafield and Nixon Peabody will continue to serve as derivatives counsel.
"This model will give each of the M/WBE firms a long-term source of regular work that should enable such firm to learn MTA's complex financing and credit structures and to gain the experience necessary to take on additional roles on MTA transactions, and ultimately to be able to serve as sole bond counsel to the MTA or any other issuer in the country," Page wrote.
Included on the underwriters' counsel panel are Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo PC; Holland & Knight LLP; McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP; Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP; Sidley Austin LLP; Squire Patton Boggs LLP; the team of Winston & Strawn LLP & Law Offices of Joseph C. Reid PA; and M/WBE firms Golden Holley James LLP; Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan LLP; Graves, Horton, Askew & Johns LLC; and Pugh, Jones & Johnson PC.
The MTA next month expects to issue $500 million of Series 2015A transportation revenue bond anticipation notes to finance approved transit and commuter projects.
Public Financial Management Inc. is the financial advisor.
Two weeks ago, the authority priced $225 million of Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority general revenue bonds to finance approved capital projects and to retire the TBTA general revenue bond anticipation notes issued last year. The transaction netted a $29.3 million premium, finance manager Patrick McCoy told the board's finance committee.
The bonds were issued as fixed-rate serial and term bonds with a final maturity of November 15, 2050, under a 35-year structure.
"We were very pleased with the transaction," said McCoy. "It got a very good market reception."
