Opening Remarks

Transcription:

Michael Ballinger (00:08):

Good morning. There we go.

(00:12)

Good morning. I'm Mike Ballinger, Publisher of the Bond Buyer. It's my pleasure to welcome you to our 10th Annual National Outlook Conference. This conference will address key issues and trends that will impact the municipal bond market in 2024 and beyond. Coming on the heels of two challenging years, our market is readjusting to lower bond volume and alter dealer community. Amid still uncertain macroeconomic conditions, but our market has real prospects for growth with many more participants, expecting issuers to bring more bonds to market as rates settle. Other key players, including many of those in the room, are already stepping up to grow their firms and take on more of a leadership role in the industry. Following the departure of UBS and Citi, hopefully this conference will help us navigate through these difficult market conditions. We're particularly delighted to have a strong lineup of speakers, especially keynote speakers including Erick Russell, Connecticut State Treasurer and Henry Cisneros, Chairman and Co-founder and Vice Chair of the Board of American Triple I and a Principal of Siebert Williams and Shank. Before I get started, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of our sponsors and speakers for the conference, particularly our conference co-chairs, Kevin Murphy of Hawkins, El Field and Wood, and Natasha Holiday of RBC.

(01:29)

We're delighted that, thank you for applauding for them. That's good.

Michael Ballinger (01:35):

We're delighted that RBC has come back as a conference co-chair of this conference, and I'm pleased to report this year that we have over almost 300 registered attendees, which is by far a record, so thank you. I also want to acknowledge several Bond Buyer employers without standing work in this conference, our program manager, almost Sebastian Dean of Piccolo, Nina Mellon and Dan Hoskins who have handled all the conference logistics and marketing and done an outstanding job. Please join me in a round of applause for the reference.

(02:04)

Michael Scarchilli, Editor in Chief and members of the New York editorial team, including Lynne Funk, Chip Barnett, Jessica Lerner, Connor Hussey, and Peter Keating will be at the conference. So I urge you to reach out to them during the course of the day. Before I introduce the conference co-chairs to kick off the conference, I want to let everybody know that the Bond Buyer has added a new conference this year to our lineup with the addition of the Bond Buyer Southeast Public Finance Conference, which will be held in Hollywood, Florida on May 6th and 7th. I hope to see everybody there as well. Now it's my pleasure to introduce our conference co-chairs. Natasha Holiday is the managing director and co-head of Infrastructure East for RVC Capital Markets where she manages a 40 person banking team and structures debt and sales bonds in the public and private markets to raise capital on behalf of large city state governments and to fund public infrastructure. The Fascia is a member of RBCs Municipal Finance Operating Committee and serves as a board member of the MSRB. She also co-chairs RBCs US Capital Markets Diversity Council. She has worked as a banker and financial advisor for 19 years and has financed and or advised over 20 billion of municipal bond transactions.

(03:09)

Kevin Murphy is a partner at Hawkins Delafield and Wood. He has served as Bond Council Disclosure Council, underwriters Council on a variety of revenue financings with particular focus on issuers in New York state and state and local housing finance agencies. He's a resident in Hawkins, New York City office and is a member of the firm's management committee. Prior to joining Hawkins, he served as the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, often a general council. He's a member of NAVILLE and a member of the Board of Governors, the municipal, former New York. Please join me in a warm welcome for Kevin Murphy.

Kevin Murphy (03:43):

Thanks, Mike. On behalf of Hawkins, Delafield Wood, wanted to welcome you all to the 2024 National Outlook Conference. Thank you all for spending your day with us. As Mike mentioned, a great new venue and as Mike mentioned, record attendance. I think in part due to Bond Buyer, putting together a great program in addition to our two keynotes who he introduced, we have four really deep dive panels on credit, the buy-side perspective technology and ESG. And after Treasure Russell's keynote, we'll open up the day with our industry Outlook panel and then we'll close with a great new panel examining the road ahead. So please take around for that as well as the cocktail reception that follows. We'll also, of course have everyone's favorite. The live market survey. I think particularly fun this year and after, there were some bright spots last year of course, including housing, which as Mike mentioned is my area, but challenging year and I think we're all looking forward to hearing what people have to say about interest rate, outlook and supply outlook. January, we're off to a great start in January, so I think we're all particularly interested to hear after the Fed meeting if it's higher for longer, does that mean issuers will jump in and want to address the backlog of new money needs or does it mean that if they're flush and can wait it out a little longer? So looking forward to that and looking forward to all the panels. So just want to kick it off and bring up Natasha Holiday, who will say a few words, introduce Treasurer Russell. Thanks.

Natasha Holiday (05:38):

Well, thank you Michael, and thank you Kevin, and it's great to see so many friends. It's great to see such a great crowd. On behalf of RBC, we're really pleased to be one of the lead sponsors for this very important conference and we're just so happy to see everyone come out and support and it is going to be a great conference with great topics. As Kevin said, right now I have the pleasure of introducing a Connecticut State Treasurer Erick Russell. So Erick Russell was sworn in as Connecticut's 84th State Treasurer on January 4th, 2023, although only in his first term and just having completed his first year in office, he feels familiar to this crowd already and that's because Treasurer Russell is no stranger to the municipal bond world. Prior to his elected office, he was a partner at Pullman and calmly where he worked as bond counsel. He was born and raised in New Haven, born and raised in New Haven Treasurer Russell adopted the work ethic of his parents both working in the family small convenience store.

(06:56)

He would become the first in his family to graduate college, earning a bachelor's degree at the University of New Haven. Treasurer Russell will continue his education at the University of Connecticut School of Law As a law student, he volunteered to help low-income taxpayers navigate the complexities of federal state law tax law as part of Yukon's low-income tax clinic. After law school, Treasurer Russell joined the prestigious Connecticut law firm, Pullman and Calmly, where he was a partner in their public and private finance group. Treasurer Russell represented towns, cities and the state in financing infrastructure projects, managing debt and restructuring pension obligations. As treasurer, he administers Connecticut's pension funds holding over 40 billion in assets, overseeing the state's debt and cash management, collects and returns unclaimed property and manages Connecticut's 5 29 plan that helps students and families save for higher education at the Bond Buyer deal of the Year awards. In December, treasurer Russell and his team was awarded the innovative financing deal of the year for their work to fund baby bonds in the state of Connecticut as a poverty reduction initiative, the first state in the country to do so. Let's give them a round of applause for that.

(08:31)

A passionate advocate for people traditionally left out of the political process and denied economic opportunity, a discipline financial steward, and he and his husband Chris, are committed servants to the state of Connecticut. And in 2022, when Treasurer Russell was elected, he became the black out LGBTQ plus person in the United States to be elected and win state office. Further ado, please warmly welcome, Connecticut State Treasurer, Erick Russell.