WASHINGTON — The Regional Bond Dealers Association announced Wednesday that it has tapped William Daly, the seasoned federal affairs director for New York City, as its senior vice president for government relations. He will start working for the group in early March.
The RBDA also announced it has retained Ellen Marshall of Marshall & Co. as an outside lobbyist on tax and other finance-related legislation. Marshall was director of tax and economic issues for the International Council of Shopping Centers before starting her own firm in 2005.
In a brief interview yesterday, Marshall said she has decades of muni-market and public finance experience. She was involved in efforts to expand the private-activity bond volume cap in the 1980s, worked on streamlined sales tax issues in the 1990s, and more recently served as an outside consultant to states and localities on tax and finance issues.
Daly, who has served every New York mayor since Ed Koch, has ties to the municipal market going back more than two decades, when he began federal advocacy work for the city in 1986.
Since 2002, he has coordinated with Congress, the White House, and federal agencies on legislative and regulatory issues of interest to the city, including taxes, municipal finance, pensions, and employee benefits.
From 1995 to 2002, he worked at the Social Security Administration as a top-level adviser.
“With Congress focusing on financial re-regulation, this is a critical time to have someone with Bill’s experience and expertise on board the association,” RBDA chief executive officer Mike Nicholas said in a statement. “He brings a wealth of experience, knowledge, and contacts to the RBDA.”
Daly said it is critical for middle-market dealers to be clearly heard by lawmakers to ensure that regulatory change “strengthens our financial system and doesn’t unintentionally harm regional dealers who didn’t contribute to the financial meltdown and are the backbone of so much of the financial system.”
The personnel announcements come as the regional group has expanded since it was formed in March 2008, to about 34 member firms from its original 14.
Nicholas has run the RBDA by himself since Michael Decker, formerly the group’s co-CEO, returned to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association in October as a managing director and co-head of its municipal securities division.
The pair had originally left SIFMA together following that trade group’s rocky merger with two predecessor organizations.
In addition to Marshall, RBDA has partnered with Nixon Peabody to provide outside legal advice on regulatory issues that impact its members.
