Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

Banco Popular de Puerto Rico is a full-service financial services provider with operations in Puerto Rico, the United States and Virgin Islands. Popular, Inc. is the largest banking institution by both assets and deposits in Puerto Rico, and in the United States Popular, Inc.

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  • Robert Servas is an Executive Director and Head of Public Finance Syndicate at JP Morgan in New York. He has over 22 years of experience in the municipal bond industry. Robert has vast experience in pricing transactions across the country, as his career has included working in Los Angeles and Chicago in addition to New York. He has been with JP Morgan or predecessor institutions for over 6 years. Robert earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration and Finance from California State University at Fullerton.

  • Michael O’Connor is a director in the Product Management group of Standard & Poor’s Securities Evaluations, Inc. He joined the product management team in 2008 after twenty years working with the evaluation group. O’Connor spent his last nine years in the group as the manager of the high yield tax exempt evaluation team.Michael has over twenty years of fixed income data and evaluation experience. He joined Standard & Poor’s in 1988 as a data research analyst before moving to the evaluation group in late 1988. While having exposure to all high yield tax exempt asset classes, Michael initially specialized in multi family housing bonds later focusing on hospital and long term care credits. He is a member of the Municipal Analyst Group of New York (MAGNY), The Fixed Income Analyst Society, Inc (FIASI) and the National Federation of Municipal Analysts (NFMA). Michael has also served on the Municipal Credit Committee for the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA)Michael holds a B. A. in Business Administration from St. Michaels College

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    Mr. Ryffel is now a Private Banker with JP Morgan after a successful career as a public finance banker. Over 20 years at A.G. Edwards, Bank of America and Edward Jones, he senior managed hundreds of new money and refunding transactions for issuers as varied as states, cities, airports, universities and hospitals. His resume includes transactions employing all manner of financing vehicles, including fixed rate, VRDBs, auction rate, insured, letter-of-credit, direct placements, and interest rate swaps. In particular, he focused on the effective utilization of the retail market to distribute municipal bonds. Mr. Ryffel is an adjunct professor at the graduate level at the George Herbert Walker School of Business and Technology at Webster University and the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis, as well as at the undergraduate level at St. Louis University. He developed and teaches a course in public finance investment banking among others. He is also a published author on topics in public finance, as we'll as a frequent speaker on the topic at industry conferences. Mr. Ryffel received his undergraduate mechanical engineering degree, magna cum laude, from Tufts University and an MBA in Finance from Boston University.

  • Mr. Delahunt is a Senior Vice President and the National Trading Manager for the Municipal Bond department of Raymond James and is located in the New York City office. He is responsible for over-seeing the risk management for both the trading and underwriting operations, along with developing marketing programs for the sales force. He has been in Fixed Income for over 28 years and has extensive experience as a Quantitative Analyst, Institutional Portfolio Manager, and National Sales Manager. Mr. Delahunt received a Joint Degree in Math & Economics from Union College in Schenectady, NY. He is a Registered Securities Representative and a Municipal Securities Principal.

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    Gail is the Managing Director for US Public Finance at Moody�s Investors Service. She is responsible for research and credit analysis for the municipal market and overseeing Moody�s consistent and transparent methodological approach to assessing credit risk across the public finance sectors including state and local governments, health care, housing, higher education and municipal supported products across the United States. In addition to these reposnibilities Gail is a member of the Moody�s Public Sector Credit Committee, an ally of the LGBTA and a member of Moody�s Women�s Network.Gail joined Moody�s in 1984 and has had experience in a variety of sectors including states and local governments, housing and municipal supported products. She has particular expertise in the �short term product area including variable rate demand bonds, commercial paper and tender option bonds.Gail has been a recipient of numerous Smith�s Research and Grading All-Star awards and is a founding member of the board of Northeast Women in Public Finance. In addition, Gail is a member of MAGNY, the National Federation of Municipal Analysts and the Society of Municipal Analysts.Before Moody�s, Gail worked for the New York State Housing Finance Agency and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in New York. Gail holds a BA in Sociology and Urban Studies from SUNY Buffalo and a MA in Urban Planning from New York University.

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    Dan McManus is managing director and general counsel of National Public Finance Guarantee Corporation and is responsible for overseeing and coordinating all of the company's legal activities. Prior to joining National, Mr. McManus was chief compliance officer for MBIA Inc. and a managing director and deputy general counsel for MBIA Insurance Corporation. He joined MBIA in February 2005 as deputy general counsel supporting the Global Public Finance Division. Mr. McManus has over 20 years of experience in the public finance industry representing issuers, underwriters, insurers and banks in a variety of sectors. He holds a B.A. in Government from Hamilton College and Juris Doctor from Pace University School of Law.

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    Peter T. Clarke joined the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company in 1977 as an institutional salesperson covering clients in the Midwest and Texas. In 1982 he moved to the underwriting desk which he headed from 1984 until 2009. He is now Vice Chairman of Public Finance. He has served on the Board of the Municipal Forum of New York, is a Past-President of the Municipal Bond Club of New York, and has served two terms on the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board of which he was Chairman from 2009 through 2010. He is a 1974 graduate of the University of Virginia.

  • Steven Klein has worked for nearly 30 years in infrastructure finance, investment banking and the credit markets. Since the early ‘90’s he has served in a series of progressively more senior positions in three major participants in the financial guarantee industry, culminating in his work since 2000 as a co-founder of a new triple-A rated company, CIFG. While at those companies, Mr. Klein has served in senior business development, product development and as head of Global Infrastructure and governmental finance. Prior to his tenure at CIFG, Mr. Klein worked in senior management positions at Enhance Financial Guaranty (now Radian) and FGIC (owned by GE Capital at that time). Prior to his financial guaranty experience, Mr. Klein served as an investment banker at Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette (DLJ) as a senior banker in public finance, during which time he led several transactions totaling over $1 billion for various state and local governments. Early in his career, Mr. Klein helped build development finance institutions and bond authorities for over 15 state and local governments as a senior manager in Economic Innovation International, Inc., a small global economic development and development finance firm headquartered in Boston/Cambridge, MA. Mr. Klein received a J.D. from Boston University, a Masters in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a B.A. from Haverford College.

  • Bob Helwig is the Deputy Director of Housing and Competitive Sourcing within the office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment.  He has been involved in the privatization of installation functions since 1996 when he joined the Department of Defense Housing Revitalization Office.  Since that time he has been engaged in privatizing both military housing and utilities. Bob has been involved in all aspects of privatization, including concept development, contract solicitation, deal structuring, portfolio management, and financial analysis.  His current responsibilities include development of policy and guidance, project analysis, program evaluation, military service oversight, budget scoring, and Congressional liaison.  Bob has Bachelor degrees in Political Science and French from the California State University at Long Beach; a Master’s degree in International Policy from the Monterey Institute of International Studies; and a Juris Doctor from George Washington University.  He is a member of both the Maryland and Washington, D.C. Bars.

  • Gary Krellenstein is nationally recognized in the infrastructure, energy finance and alternative energy fields, and is a frequent speaker on energy and finance issues. He has given numerous presentations to utilities, environmental groups, and energy and financial organizations He has also lectured and testified at Harvard University, the U.S. Congress (House Science and Technology Committee), Carnegie Mellon University, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the National Governors Association, the American Public Power Association (APPA), and the New York Academy of Science. For the past 16 years he has hosted and coordinated one of the premiere annual power and gas conferences in the nation for both utilities and investors. Gary is a Managing Director at Kroll Bond Ratings where he specializes in Public Finance and infrastructure analysis. Prior to coming to Kroll’s in 2011, he spent 11 years as a Managing Director and Investment Banker in J.P.Morgan’s Energy and Environmental Group - specializing in utilities, alternative energy technologies and project financing. Gary has also worked as the Director of Municipal Research at First Albany Corporation, a Senior Vice President at Lehman Brothers and a Vice president and Research Analyst at Merrill Lynch. He holds degrees in Nuclear Engineering and Computer Science, as well as an MBA from Cornell University, and started his career as a nuclear engineer and environmental/licensing analyst for the Envirosphere Company, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.Prior to becoming an investment banker, Gary took top honors in the national polls of financial analysts conducted by Institutional Investor Magazine (1st team for 11 consecutive years). He has also been elected to All-American Research Teams (first place in the Utilities, Industrial Development and Pollution Control categories) by the Bond Buyer, Global Guaranty, and Smith’s Research and Rating Review. In addition, the National Federation of Municipal Analysts (NFMA) presented Mr. Krellenstein the “1998 Award for Excellence” for his work in credit research and analysis.He recently served on the Board of Directors of the Climate Response Fund, an NGO which focuses on technologies to address climate change; was a contributing author on two books on Public Finance; and taught the NFMA’s “Intro to Public Power” course for the past decade. Gary is also the former chairman of The Bond Marketing Association’s (now SIFMA*) Municipal Credit Committee as well as the former co-chairman of the NFMA’s “Best Practices” committee for utilities and also sat on the Advisory Committee for Public Utilities Fortnightly magazine. Mr. Krellenstein is a member of the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Nuclear Society, the IEEE Power Engineering Society, the NYC Partnership Energy Task Force, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.