Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

Bernard B. Beal is Chief Executive Officer of M. R. Beal & Company. Mr. Beal founded the firm in 1988 following a successful career of nine years in municipal and corporate finance at Shearson Lehman Hutton. Mr. Beal has served on numerous boards and authorities including the New York State Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Securities Industry Association, Public Securities Association, the National Association of Securities Professionals, Carleton College and the National Foundation for Affordable Housing. Mr. Beal served as Chair of A Better Chance. Mr. Beal currently serves as Vice-Chair the SIFMA Committee on Diversity and serves as the incoming Chair the SIFMA Foundation for Investor Education.Bernard Beal earned an MBA in 1979 from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Palo Alto, CA. Three years earlier he graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics from Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota.

Charles A. Giordano is a senior director in Fitch Ratings U. S. public finance group.  Charles is responsible for ratings and analysis of state and local housing finance agencies, military privatizations and various real estate financings.Prior to joining Fitch in 1999, Charles was an assistant director for the New York City Housing Authority, where he was responsible for strategic planning in the asset management and private market operations department.Charles earned a BBA from Niagara University and an MBA from Adelphi University.

Doug Lamb is a partner in the Richmond office of McGuireWoods. His representative engagements include successfully closed transactions in 45 states involving tax-exempt, taxable, tax credit and direct-pay bonds. The financed projects range from traditional state and local infrastructure needs, such as schools, higher education, jails, courthouses and water, sewer and solid waste facilities, to renewable energy, energy efficiency and economic development projects.As a result, his work spans all types of obligations and credits, such as operating and capital leases, subject to appropriation and moral obligations, revenue pledges, limited tax pledges, full faith and credit obligations, liquidity and credit enhancement arrangements from third party insurers and financial institutions and non-recourse, project finance. Many of these transactions have used public-private partnerships and other subsidies such as federal historic, energy and new markets tax credits and corresponding state tax credits. Recently, Mr. Lamb has served as bond, lender's and underwriter’s counsel on innovative financing structures using qualified school construction, qualified zone academy, qualified energy conservation and new clean renewable energy programs, new markets tax credits and the federal 1603 grant in lieu of tax credits. Some of his prior engagements have involved issuances of recovery zone facility and economic development bonds, gulf opportunity zone bonds and direct-pay build America bonds. Mr. Lamb received his J.D. from the T.C. Williams School of Law, University of Richmond in 1998 and his B.A. from Washington and Lee University in 1993.

G. Scott Rafshoon has a diverse legal practice that includes corporate law, government affairs and project finance.  Combining these disciplines, he is a leader in the Firm’s public-private partnership (“P3”) practice.Mr. Rafshoon has represented clients involved in various P3 projects with the federal government, including all three branches of the armed services.  He is currently managing an interdisciplinary team of lawyers from the Firm’s corporate, securities, real estate, environmental, government contracts and government affairs practice areas in connection with the privatization and subsequent redevelopment, management, construction and renovation of military family housing facilities at military installations around the country. In that capacity, he has led negotiations with the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force, third-party construction, engineering and design firms and private sources of capital. These transactions typically rely on non-recourse or limited recourse financing using a combination of debt, equity and credit enhancement.In the corporate law arena, Mr. Rafshoon advises companies in connection with mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, corporate governance, contracts, joint ventures and commercial lending. He has had considerable experience selling businesses of various sizes, in the United States and overseas. He also has represented companies in negotiating credit facilities and other loan arrangements.Mr. Rafshoon also practices with the Firm's government affairs group, with an emphasis on election law, ethics and campaign finance issues. A native of Atlanta, his clients include several local, state and federal political candidates and officeholders as well as political action committees. His knowledge of this area of the law and his background as a professional journalist have enabled him to bring an additional level of service to many of the Firm's corporate clients. He has represented clients before the Georgia Ethics Commission and the Federal Election Commission.Prior to attending law school, Mr. Rafshoon was a newspaper and magazine reporter, with an emphasis on political reporting. This background gives him a unique vantage point from which to advise a range of clients. He has also worked on First Amendment issues and is editor of Georgia's Sunshine Laws: A Citizen's Guide to Open Government.

Jess Totten is the Director of Competitive Markets Division for the Public Utility Commission of Texas. He previously served in policy development and attorney positions at the PUC. His responsibilities have included managing the implementation of the Texas electric retail competition law and related programs, such as renewable energy and energy efficiency, and developing legislative recommendations and Commission policy relating to the competitive electric and telecommunications industries. He has participated in proceedings concerning retail and wholesale competition, rates, licensing of facilities, and resource planning and has been involved in the process and policy issues relating to the development of competitive renewable energy zones. Prior to joining the Texas PUC, he served as an attorney and Deputy General Counsel for the Panama Canal Commission.Mr. Totten is a 1973 graduate of Rice University and a received a law degree from the University of Texas School of Law in 1977. He is a member of the State Bar of Texas.

Florence Zeman manages the Public Finance Housing Finance & State Revolving Funds team at Moody’s which is responsible for providing ratings for the state and local housing finance agency single and multifamily bond programs and for state clean water and drinking water revolving funds.  Under Florence’s direction the team developed new rating products for various housing finance areas including low income housing tax credit funds, military housing and privatized student housing. She has also been involved in the ratings of other public finance credits,  real estate and asset backed transactions and sovereigns and sub-sovereign credits.  Florence is a member of the Public Finance Credit Committee and is responsible for much of the Housing team’s research activities. She frequently represents Moody’s at industry conferences and is often quoted in the media.Prior to joining Moody’s in 1994, Florence was a Vice President in the Structured Finance Department at AMBAC. She has a master’s degree in Public Finance and a bachelor’s degree in history, both from New York University.

With more than thirty years of corporate and real estate legal practice, Robert E. Tritt brings a broad spectrum of experience to public-private partnerships.  He is Co-Chair of the Military Base and Communities Practice of McKenna Long & Aldridge.  He is actively engaged in the representation of the private sector and local redevelopment authorities in the redevelopment of closed and realigned military bases.  Military base projects include representing the private sector or other end users of redeveloped bases at:Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant, Texarkana, TXKansas Army Ammunition Plant, Parsons, KSRiverbank Army Ammunition Plant, Modesto, CAFort Gillem, Forest Park, GANAS Brunswick, Brunswick MEMCAS Tustin, Tustin CANavy Supply Corps School, Athens GAHe has skill in assisting the private sector in investments in and around expanding military bases, including renewable energy projects.  He also represents governmental entities and the private sector in other forms of public-private partnerships, including privatization of educational facilities for K-12 schools and higher educational purposes.Mr. Tritt is experienced in complex real estate development and redevelopment and the financing of those efforts through private and public finance and through tax incentives.Mr. Tritt has further extensive experience in project development in the energy field and has represented independent power producers in the development and financing of merchant power plants.  He is a frequent speaker and panelist on BRAC and public-private partnerships related issues and has served as a mentor for local communities at workshops sponsored by the Association of Defense Communities.

John M. May, Managing Director splits his time between the firm’s St. Louis and Chicago offices. He is responsible for developing and growing the firm’s Renewable Energy Practice.  He is a seasoned project finance investment banker who has financed over $1 billion in loan and par values for over 100 clients in his 15-year banking career.  In the past three years, he has become one of the top renewable energy bankers in the country, having developed a national practice in renewable energy finance focusing on biofuels, biomass and coal gasification.  He is financial advisor to numerous renewable companies and has placed senior and subordinated debt financing for new projects, expansions and acquisitions.  He has also been placement agent to companies raising debt through the issuance of tax-exempt and taxable bonds in the ethanol industry.  He was responsible for developing one of the first tax-exempt subordinated bond structures sold to major U.S institutional investors to fund ethanol projects.  He has also pioneered the use of State guarantees of debt for biofuels financings.  He secured a $15 million full faith and credit guarantee from the State of Illinois for a biodiesel project.  He also underwrote one the country’s first tax-exempt bond issues to fund a landfill gas-to-electricity project.  One of his current interests is in the development of tax-exempt solid waste bonds for use in funding gas to liquids projects.  He has been involved in financing renewable projects in ten Midwestern and Western states. John’s renewable energy clients include public companies such as Pacific Ethanol, GTL Resources PLC, Rentech, Ethanex Energy and Four Rivers Bioenergy; and private companies such as Biofuels Company of America (in which Bunge of North America was an investor), Whitewater Ethanol and Nexsun Energy.   He is a frequent speaker at national conferences, and has given recent presentations on financing cellulosic ethanol and the history of lending to biofuels by the commercial bank and bond markets.  He presented at the Platts Cellulosic Ethanol Conference held in Chicago in November 2007, and at the Future Fuels Conference in Washington, D.C. in December 2007.  He has provided counsel on financing options and the credit markets to such government and association industry participants as the Staff of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee, U.S. Department of Energy/NREL, Missouri and Illinois Corn Growers Associations and the Illinois Finance Authority.  He has been featured in recent articles and web seminars on biofuels finance authored or sponsored by Biofuels Journal and published on Grainnet.com.Prior to beginning his investment banking career, John practiced law at two national firms in Kansas City and Dallas.  He received his J.D. and M.B.A. (with Concentration in Finance) degrees from the University of Kansas, and his B.A. With Honors Cum Laude from Brown University.