Title: Executive Director, Head of Tax-Exempt Project Finance and Sustainable Infrastructure Group
Firm: Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC
Age: 32
Zach Solomon started at Morgan Stanley as a summer intern in 2009 and rose to executive director by the age of 30.
Zach, now 32, is its youngest group head.
In 2019 and 2020, Zach led $2.7 billion in unrated, tax-exempt private-activity bond transactions for Brightline Florida, America’s first privately funded high-speed passenger rail service.
Zach leads Morgan Stanley's Municipal Sustainable Infrastructure practice, which ranks No. 1 in green, social and sustainability bonds underwritten for municipal and not-for-profit issuers to date and was named 2021 Lead Manager of the Year for U.S. Muni Sustainability Bonds, 2021 Lead Manager of the Year for U.S. Muni Social Bonds and 2020 Lead Manager of the Year for U.S. Muni Green Bonds by Environmental Finance.
Zach has led the development of green, social and sustainability bond frameworks and ESG marketing strategies for Morgan Stanley's 120-plus senior managed transactions, including the two largest environmental impact bonds to date — the city of Hampton, Virginia, and the city of Buffalo, New York. He also helped lead the ESG strategies on three Bond Buyer Deal of the Year winners — the 2020 ESG Financing of the Year, the Ford Foundation; the 2019 Northeast Deal of the Year, Battery Park City Authority; and the 2019 Small Issuer of the Year, the Vermont Municipal Bond Bank.
The municipal market is adapting to the changing investing landscape to include more environmental, social and governance factors and private capital into building infrastructure, Zach said. He sees this as inevitable and important.
"We are shaping the next century of sustainable infrastructure," he said. Zach said he sees more project financings, taxables and more public-private partnerships in the municipal space as there is "undoubtedly more demand" from all types of non-traditional muni investors, including overseas investors and private equity investors.
He also works with muni institutional investors as they develop their ESG portfolios and Morgan Stanley Wealth Management’s “Investing with Impact” retail platform.
Zach serves on Morgan Stanley’s Global Sustainability Bond Council, in Morgan Stanley’s ESG Center of Excellence and on the Fixed Income Division’s ESG Committee, the firm’s primary ESG committees.
Vice chair of the Morgan Stanley-UJA Federation of New York Young Leadership Circle, Zach is on the board of Young Professionals in Infrastructure. He also led a charitable initiative, the Comfort Long Beach Initiative, to redevelop his hometown after Hurricane Sandy.
A born and bred New Yorker, Solomon enjoys spending time in the many public spaces in the city — a tangible aspect of the work he does, he said — including running along the Hudson River and playing tennis.
Zach is a graduate of Georgetown University and Columbia Business School.
