Lawyers / Professionals

Mr. Downes has extensive experience as bond counsel, underwriter's counsel and borrower's counsel in a variety of tax-exempt and taxable financings for authorities, commissions, not-for-profit healthcare organizations, and institutions of higher education in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Illinois, Ohio, Louisiana, Tennessee and New York. He has been involved with financings for major institutions in each of these states, as well as for smaller hospitals and long-term care facilities in these regions.

His experience includes fixed and variable rate financings, auction rate securities, credit-enhanced and liquidity-supported structures, convertible and exchangeable bonds, and all types of derivative transactions used in public financing transactions. He has assumed an active role on behalf of clients in negotiating business covenants and other deal terms with various financing participants.

Mr. Downes has substantial experience in FHA-insured mortgage bond financings for hospitals and skilled nursing facilities in New York and North Carolina. He served as bond counsel to The Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y., in connection with an issuance of taxable-to-tax-exempt exchangeable bonds secured by an FHA-insured mortgage, and in connection with the establishment of the hospital's taxable commercial paper program.

He has also served as borrower's counsel to other major hospitals in New York, including Beth Israel Medical Center, St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center and The New York Hospital, for FHA-insured mortgage financings, private taxable financings and equipment leases.