Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

Dyer is a Senior Fixed Income Analyst at USAA. He joined USAA in 2000 after having been an analyst at Southwest Securities, Inc. and Rauscher Pierce Refsnes, Inc in Dallas. Greer currently analyzes municipal bonds for USAA’s mutual funds, insurance portfolios and bank and is responsible for all bonds in Texas and a variety of other Southern and some Midwestern states. He has a variety of experience in municipal bond analysis, trading, risk management and operations, as well as credit experience as a former national bank examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. He received a BBA from the University of Texas at Austin in 1983 and an MBA there in 1993. He earned the Chartered Financial Analyst designation in 2003. He is a three-time member of the Smith’s All-Star Research Team in the Senior Living and Airport categories. He is a member of the San Antonio Society of Financial Analysts and the National Federation of Municipal Analysts.

Barry Smitherman is a fourth generation Texan appointed by Governor Rick Perry to the PUCT on April 21, 2004. He was reappointed on September 13, 2007 and promoted to Chairman on November 14, 2007. He was recently awarded the State Leadership award by the American Wind Energy Association for the PUCT’s pioneering renewable energy zone policy for proactive transmission development.  He was also recently selected one of the Energy and Utility Industry’s “Great Transformers” for 2010 by a partnership which includes Forbes magazine.Barry is a member of the State Bar of Texas, a member of the Governor's Competitiveness Council, an ex officio board member of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and the Texas Regional Entity (TRE), a member of the Regional State Committee (RSC) for the Southwest Power Pool (SPP), a member of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) Committee on Energy Resources and the Environment, served as one of 30 members of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Electricity Advisory Committee (EAC) and is Vice-Chairman of the Governor’s Advisory Panel on Federal Environmental Regulations. Barry grew up in Highlands, Texas; a working class neighborhood on the east side of Houston. He graduated from Ross Sterling High School in Baytown and continued his education at Texas A&M University receiving a BBA summa cum laude. He received his J.D. from The University of Texas School of Law while working at the State Capitol for Senator Lindon Williams. Afterward he received a M.P.A. at Harvard University and was awarded the first Joel Leff Fellowship in Political Economy by the Kennedy School of Government.Between 1986 and 2002, Barry was a public finance investment banker working with state and local governments throughout the South, Southwest and Midwest to build infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges, airports, water and sewer systems, schools, hospitals, and sports facilities. During this time he held leadership positions with First Boston, Lazard Freres, JP Morgan Securities, and Bank One Capital Markets.  Beginning in 2003, Barry began a second career as a prosecutor with the Harris County District Attorney’s office.  During this time he successfully prosecuted many jury trials against defendants charged with DWI, assault, theft, possession of controlled substance, and numerous other crimes.  At the time of his appointment to the PUCT, Barry was part of the prestigious Family Criminal Law Division (FCLD) which prosecutes domestic violence cases, especially cases where the victim has recanted the occurrence of the crime.In 1990, Barry was a member of the American Center for International Leadership delegation to the former Soviet Union.  In 1996, Barry was a delegate to the State Republican convention in San Antonio.  Barry is also a former adjunct professor of public administration at the University of St. Thomas in Houston and a former member of the Boards of the Texas Public Finance Authority, and the Harris County Health Facilities Development Corporation.Since joining the PUCT in 2004, Barry has supervised in issuance of over $5.6 billion in “transition/rate recovery bonds” issued by various utilities operating in Texas.  These securitization financings have saved Texas ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Bob Collie has been a partner in the law firm of Andrews Kurth LLP since March 2001. Previously, he was a partner in the law firm of Mayor, Day, Caldwell & Keeton LLP for 18 years. Mr. Collie served as City Attorney of Houston from 1978 through 1980. He practices in the public law area, focusing on public finance, where he represents state agencies, local governments and other clients in the issuance of tax-exempt bonds. He has been active in education, transportation, general obligation, water and sewer utility, port and sports facility financings. Mr. Collie has represented local governments as special counsel in joint public/private developments, election, redistricting, annexation and other public law general counsel matters.

Robert A. Rich, a transportation specialist with over 25 years of municipal experience, joined PFM in 2001 after working as an investment banker, research director and ratings analyst. Mr. Rich has worked on in excess of $35 billion in financings with various transportation agencies and authorities.Prior to his career on Wall Street, Mr. Rich worked for the State of New Jersey and was a United States Presidential Management Intern. Mr. Rich served as a board member of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association’s Public-Private Ventures Division. Mr. Rich has also been involved in the design of federal innovative finance initiatives and has testified before Congress and State Legislatures on innovative finance. He is a board member of Autism New Jersey, an advocacy organization for individuals with autism. Mr. Rich received his AB from Brown University, MPA from Columbia University and JD from Rutgers Law School. He is a member of the bar in New York, New Jersey and the District of Columbia.

James T Colby III, Senior Municipal Strategist/ Portfolio Manager, Fixed Income Investments, is responsible for the Municipal ETF investments, security transactions, market strategy, market analysis and product development for Van Eck municipal bond exchange traded funds. Prior to joining Van Eck, Jim was Senior Portfolio manager and Director of High Yield Municipal Fixed Income at Lord Abbett where he oversaw the creation and integration of this product line and managed the fund to the $Billion dollar threshold and top decile performance. Prior to that Jim was the Director and Senior Portfolio Manager for Municipal Fixed Income at John Hancock Funds, Director for Fixed Income Management for Old Harbor Capital, and co-manager/ Senior Portfolio Manager for municipal funds at Evergreen Asset Management in Boston. Jim has over 20 years experience of municipal fixed income portfolio management with both retail and institutional companies. He earned an MBA in Finance from Hofstra University and a BA in Economics and International Relations from Brown University.

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

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.