Veteran-Owned BDs Lead CalVet $446 Mil GO Bond Deal

CalVet GO bond deal brokerdealer blog

BrokerDealer.com blog is honored to profile the select Veteran-owned FINRA firms and their respective roles in helping the State of California Department of Veterans Affairs bring to market CalVet’s upcoming issuance of $446 Million General Obligation Bonds (GO).

The following news release has been excerpted, a link to the full news release follows below..

Treasurer Chiang to Sell $446 Million in Veterans General Obligation Bonds

10/1/2015

SACRAMENTO – California State Treasurer John Chiang is announcing the sale of up to $445,700,000 of Veterans General Obligation Bonds.

“California’s Veterans served our state and nation with honor,” Chiang said. “We owe them a debt of gratitude that this bond sale will begin repaying by way of helping our returning service members and their families realize the American dream of homeownership.”

The General Obligation Bonds are being issued to finance home and farm mortgage loans for California military Veterans under the Farm and Home Purchase Program, administered by the California Department of Veterans Affairs (CalVet).

“This is an important bond sale directly aiding California’s Veterans,” said CalVet Secretary Vito Imbasciani, M.D. “I’m proud California offers these bonds as an expression of our thanks to our Veterans and their families for their service and sacrifice.  This General Obligation Bond sale will provide CalVet with funding sufficient to offer home loans to hundreds of California’s Veterans.”

The joint senior managers include: Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which currently employs more than 10,000 Veterans, Guards and Reservists with a major initiative to increase the hiring over the next several years and Academy Securities, a “post 9/11 DVBE broker-dealer” founded by a U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis graduate. Along with these two firms, the underwriting group will also include investment bank Mischler Financial Group, led by battle-decorated West Point grads and the financial industry’s oldest institutional brokerdealer owned and operated by service-disabled veterans, and Drexel Hamilton, LLC, a full-service institutional broker-dealer that “offers meaningful employment opportunities to disabled veterans in the financial services industry.:

“Bank of America has proudly provided financial services to the U.S. Military for 95 years.  With our long history and ongoing commitment to U.S. veterans, we were pleased to be involved in this deal, working with veteran-owned firms in a deal that will benefit former Californian service men and women,” said John Lawlor, head of Municipal Banking & Markets Group at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, himself a former U.S. Navy veteran, and graduate of the U.S Naval Academy.

“As the financial industry’s oldest and largest SDV-owned and operated firm and rooted in California, our legacy is dedicated to supporting Veteran initiatives. We are therefore honored to continue our long relationship with the State and to have been selected Co-Senior Manager for this CalVet financing,” said Dean Chamberlain, CEO of Mischler Financial Group.

For the full story, please click here