Eichner & Norris PLLC is a
Washington, D.C. law firm of six attorneys and three financial
analyst/paralegals specializing in all aspects of tax-exempt municipal bond finance
and in certain types of taxable structured debt financing transactions. Our attorneys have a combined total of over
100 years’ experience serving as counsel on a wide range of municipal bond
financings. These financings have
involved over 3,000 separate transactions over the past 30 years aggregating
many billions of dollars in principal amount in virtually every state in the
United States.
Our firm also
prides itself in having substantial tax law and financial expertise, as well
as other legal expertise, in these transactions. Both of our partners, Ad Eichner and Wade
Norris, have MBAs as well as law degrees, and most of our other attorneys
have educational backgrounds in business and finance as well as law. In addition, the firm has substantial
experience and expertise running cash flow analyses, performing rebate
computations and preparing yield proofs on a wide range of financings. Our
cash flow and yield certifications are accepted by the major rating agencies
and credit enhancers of tax exempt bonds.
The majority of
our practice involves housing bond financing, primarily multifamily but also
including single family housing bond finance.
During the past five years, the firm believes it has ranked first or
second in the United States in the number of tax-exempt housing bond
financings in which the firm served as underwriter’s or placement agent’s
counsel. The firm also frequently
serves as special bond matters counsel to borrowers in connection with the
development, purchase and sale of bond financed properties. The firm has also worked extensively with
and for the Federal Housing Administration and the Department of Housing and
Urban Development addressing the bond related aspects of their programs. Additional information on our firm’s recent
experience in tax-exempt multi-family housing bond financings, including
representative clients, is set forth in Appendix A.
During their
careers, our attorneys have often played a major role in developing new
financing techniques in the area of tax-exempt housing finance, and we
believe that our lawyers are viewed as among the nation’s leading
practitioners in this area. Within the
area of multifamily housing bond finance, we believe we have been involved in
every major type of financing which the market has seen in the past 30 years.
These financings have involved various types of credit enhancements,
including enhancements provided by FHA, GNMA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the
Federal Home Loan Banks, municipal bond insurance with all the major bond
insurers (e.g., MBIA, AMBAC, FSA, FGIC, Asset Guaranty),
bank letters of credit, insurance company guaranties and credit enhancement
devices provided by other institutions.
Many of these financings have been multiple-tier financings utilizing
senior/subordinated and other structures to achieve an optimal securitization
of project cash flows. In the recent
past, the firm has also participated in the development of several
state-of-the art securitization structures for pools of unrated,
noncredit-enhanced bonds, and the firm has represented both borrower and
program sponsors with respect to the interest rate caps, swaps, total return
swaps and other derivative products now frequently used in these
transactions. More recently the firm
has represented underwriters and other clients in the areas of hospital
revenue bonds, higher and lower educational bond finance and other areas of municipal
bond finance.
The firm believes
it has a unique level of expertise in the federal tax and securities laws,
rating agency requirements, credit enhancement programs, market factors, financial
structures and other critical variables affecting tax-exempt housing bond and
other municipal bond financings. In
addition, we believe our attorneys, through their decades of experience in
tax-exempt housing bond finance, have a long-standing extensive network of
relationships with most of the major participants in these areas of municipal
bond finance. We believe these factors
enable our firm to deliver a unique level of service and expertise to our
clients in the design as well as the implementation of the financings in
which we are involved.
