In the News

Common Bond Capital Partners
Adds Emad Mirgoli as Director

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(May 7, 2012) Common Bond Capital Partners LLC has added public finance specialist Emad Mirgoli as Director as the firm builds a portfolio of defaulting municipal bond projects for its investors.

Mirgoli specializes in government, utility and infrastructure development financings and has more than 15 years experience with public bond underwriters including Stone & Youngberg, UBS Securities and RBC Capital Markets. In addition to his work on defaulted municipal bond projects, Mirgoli will work with the firm's partners to create customized solutions for renewable energy projects for municipal entities.

Common Bond Capital Partners was formed in January 2012 to provide capital, financial know-how and real estate development expertise to help resolve the nation's mounting defaults in the complex land-secured municipal bond sector. The company provides a first-of-its-kind platform to build beneficial alliances between bondholders, the communities affected by recession-era municipal bond defaults, and fresh sources of development capital and expertise. Common Bond co-founders are currently evaluating defaulting bond projects in Florida and California as additions to their work-out portfolio."

Mirgoli spent over 8 years as a member of the Stone & Youngberg S&Y Capital Group which specialized in the workout of defaulted, land secured municipal bond projects. As part of that team, he handled workouts of defaulted projects located in the cities of Palmdale, Ione and Moreno Valley, California.

Municipal Bond Default Trends

In the last decade local governments issued nearly $30 billion in land-secured municipal bonds to finance the public infrastructure projects needed to build new communities in many of the nation's fastest growing states. A significant minority—approximately 200 bond issues totaling over $5 billion—have or will default in the next few years because of high delinquency rates in the special taxes or assessments used to pay bond debt service. Land-secured bond defaults are a lagging indicator of the recessionary economy. And while the housing markets are beginning to recover, experts believe the bond default wave has not yet passed.

Common Bond Co-Founders

Common Bond co-founders L. William Huck and Todd J. Anson have more than 60 years of combined success in municipal bond finance, real estate law and real estate development.

Veteran public finance banker Bill Huck managed the successful workout of two dozen California bond defaults during a 30-year career at Stone & Youngberg, a San Francisco-based investment bank that has been the leading underwriter of California municipal bond issues since the mid-1980s. During the 1990's real estate recession, Huck built a remarkable record by successfully pioneering the California bond industry's efforts to develop innovative workout strategies and statutory tools to resolve bond defaults while restoring delinquent properties to the productive tax rolls. During this period he successfully restructured defaulted or troubled bond issues in major metro areas such as San Diego, Los Angeles and Long Beach, as well as numerous mid-sized and smaller communities. In 1997, he founded S&Y Capital Group which made principal investments in distressed bonds and land.

Innovative real estate developer Todd Anson is a long-time big firm real estate attorney and managing partner who entered real estate development in 1999. He was among the first to partner with tech companies such as Cisco Systems and Biogen Idec to own large-scale campus facilities. As co-founder of his development company, Cisterra Partners, Anson earned recognition as NAIOP's Developer of the Year (2003) and as Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year in Real Estate (2007). Cisterra's downtown San Diego trophy office property, the 15-story DiamondView Tower overlooking Petco Park, has been widely recognized for its creativity and unique approach to office space. The award-winning project was a key piece of the City of San Diego's downtown redevelopment effort and, when sold in 2008, generated the highest price per square foot ever achieved in San Diego.

Aligning the Interests of Key Parties

"While the conventional private equity approach is to attempt to buy distressed bonds at deep discounts from desperate owners facing cash or regulatory pressures to sell, Common Bond Capital Partners proposes a strategy that aligns interests of key parties," said Huck. "Most land-secured bonds are owned by sophisticated institutional investors with just as much cash, and typically more municipal bond sector experience, than the private equity opportunists who sometimes low-ball bids on distressed bonds. We believe the Common Bond collaborative approach will have significantly greater appeal to existing bondholders. Even so, we also intend to be a source of liquidity for bondholders, as needed."

For additional information on Common Bond Capital Partners investment opportunities and solutions to municipal bond defaults, please visit the company's website at www.commonbondcap.com.