Bond Insurance in a Changing Market and Regulatory Environment: What to Expect

Steven A. Chamberlin
Manager, Tax Exempt Bonds - Compliance & Program Management
Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

As CPM Manager, Steve leads the IRS’s voluntary compliance, taxpayer assistance, and compliance analysis and review programs within the Tax Exempt Bonds Division. In this capacity, he directs the resolution of tax violations voluntarily brought forward by governmental issuers, the review of claims for recovery of overpayments of arbitrage rebate, the planning of compliance activities within segments of the tax-exempt bond market, and the review of examination cases. Steve is also responsible for providing technical assistance to the Director and the Field Operations staff, coordinating formal guidance projects with Chief Counsel and Treasury offices, and developing education and compliance initiatives. He joined Tax Exempt Bonds as a Tax Law Specialist through the Presidential Management Fellows Program.

Steve received both a Juris Doctor and Master of Science in public policy and management from the University of Oregon as well as a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Puget Sound. He is currently a member of the Missouri State Bar.

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Michael Moriarty
Deputy Superintendent for Property and Capital Markets
New York State Insurance Department

Michael Moriarty is the Deputy Superintendent for Property and Capital Markets with responsibilities including overseeing the licensing, examination and regulation of all property-casualty insurers and related entities, and oversight of the capital markets and risk management activities of insurance companies. Deputy Superintendent Moriarty also oversees the regulation of captive insurance companies in New York.

Deputy Superintendent Moriarty began his career in the Department in 1979 after receiving a Bachelor of Science Degree in accounting from the City University of New York. Since then, he has served in a number of positions, most recently as the Director of the Department’s Capital Markets Bureau. The Capital Markets Bureau has been operational since 2000 and oversees the capital markets and risk management activities of New York-licensed insurers. He has worked on the development of new initiatives to enhance the financial solvency oversight of licensed insurers in New York, including accelerating the trend towards reliance on risk-based analyses/examinations and coordinating the Department’s policy on investments, derivatives and insurance securitization.

Prior to that, Mr. Moriarty served as the Assistant Chief Examiner of the Property Bureau. In that position, he coordinated the financial analysis of the property-casualty industry in New York.

Deputy Superintendent Moriarty participated in task forces and working groups of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). He represented the Department as Chair of the Risk Assessment Working Group, which is charged with developing the national risk-focused approach to financial solvency regulation, and as Chair of the Valuation of Securities Task Force, which establishes policy on the regulation of insurance industry investments.

Deputy Superintendent Moriarty was the 2005 recipient of the NAIC Robert Dineen Award for Outstanding Service and Contribution to the State Regulation of Insurance, the most prestigious honor bestowed by the NAIC. He lives in Middle Village, NY with his wife, Natalie and their son, Danny.

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Michael J. Schozer
President
Assured Guaranty Corp.

Michael Schozer has been President of Assured Guaranty Corp. since December 2003.

Prior to joining Assured Guaranty, Mr. Schozer was Managing Director, Structured Finance and Credit Derivatives at Ambac Assurance Corporation (Ambac). He joined Ambac in 1996 and was responsible for the CDO, credit derivatives, large equipment leasing securitization and structured insurance businesses. Mr. Schozer was also a member of Ambac's senior credit committee.

Prior to joining Ambac, he was a director in the debt capital markets business of Barclays Bank, where he ran the North American Structured Products Group. Previously, he had worked on the interest rate and currency swaps desk. Mr. Schozer began his career in public accounting and worked at both KPMG and Ernst & Young.

Michael Schozer holds a B.S. from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the University of Virginia.

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Margaret Purcell
Executive Director, National Tax Exempt Organization Group
Ernst & Young LLP

Margaret is an Executive Director in our Exempt Organization Tax Services Practice based in Jacksonville, Florida. As the national leader for Ernst & Young of the Private Activity Compliance Services practice, Margaret is responsible for reviews of the reports generated by our team of professionals nationwide. She has more than 30 years experience in tax-exempt finance and the health science industries and has additionally provided services to health care organizations, academic medical centers, states, cities, counties, universities, school districts, transportation and utility authorities as well as housing authority issuers of debt.

Education and Affiliations
- Bachelor of Arts, American University
- Member of the National Association of Bond Lawyers
- Member of the Florida Government Finance Association

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Valerie Pearsall Roberts
Partner
Jones Day

Valerie's practice covers a wide range of federal income tax questions related to the issuance of tax-exempt debt obligations and related transactions, including acquisition finance, refundings, interest rate swaps, and other financial derivatives. She has represented major state and local issuers, underwriters, borrowers, broker/dealers, and financial advisors in the structuring and issuance of taxable and tax-exempt debt to finance health care, education, extended care facilities, transportation, energy, solid waste, and housing. In addition, Valerie advises on post-issuance transactions, frequently in the context of acquisitions, mergers, bankruptcies, changes of use, and debt or investment restructuring and on secondary market transactions including total return swaps.

In addition, Valerie has served as tax counsel to the Illinois Finance Authority, the New York State Attorney General, the New York State Medical Care Facilities Finance Agency, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, and the New York State Environmental Facilities Corporation and to many underwriters, including Bear, Stearns & Co., Merrill Lynch, UBS Financial Services, Lehman Brothers, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Global Markets, Morgan Stanley, and B.C. Ziegler & Company, and to financial advisors such as Ponder & Co.

In 2000, Valerie served as editor-in-chief of the Federal Taxation of Municipal Bonds, published by Aspen Publishing for the National Association of Bond Lawyers (NABL), having served as an editor in 1998 and 1999. She was a member of NABL’s Municipal Derivatives Taskforce (2005-2006) and a member of the Steering Committee for the Bond Attorney’s Workshop (2006 and 2007). She’s also a member of the New York State Tax Exempt Financing Committee and the American Bar Association’s Tax Exempt Financing Committee.

Valerie frequently serves as a panelist for NABL at its annual Tax and Securities Law seminar and its annual bond attorneys workshop on issues such as swaps and other derivatives, “hot topics,” refunding bonds, 501(c)(3) bonds, tax shelter rules affecting tax exempt entities, working capital financings, private activity bonds, allocation and accounting rules, rebate and “esoteric tax topics.” She has also served as a panelist for the Practising Law Institute on tax-exempt financing and co-authored (with Arthur Miller) “Refundings of Tax Exempt Bonds: Problems and Analysis.”

Education: New York University (B.A.); Lyndon College (M.Ed.); The University of Chicago Law School (J.D. 1981); New York University (LL.M. in Taxation 1986)

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Matt Fabian
Managing Director
Municipal Market Advisors (MMA)

Mr. Fabian is a Managing Director for Municipal Market Advisors (MMA), an independent research and strategy provider specializing in municipal bonds. Founded in 1995 by current President Tom Doe, MMA supplies research content, benchmark data, and consulting services to a diverse client base of more than 150 dealers, institutional and retail investors, hedge funds, and municipal issuers. MMA is based in Concord, MA and has offices in Westport, CT; Taos, NM; Summit, NJ; and Bradenton, FL. MMA’s reports include INSIGHTsm (an intraday market commentary on secondary trading, new issue activity, and relative value), The Strategistsm (a daily strategy publication, targeted to institutional investors), The Weekly Outlooksm (a recommendation - oriented market review, targeted to generalist institutional and retail investors), and The Advisorsm (a monthly comprehensive analytical report). MMA also produces a daily AAA municipal benchmark curve, The Consensussm, that incorporates the pricing scales from 80 dealers and investor institutions. TheMuniCenter, MuniWorks, Fabkom, Fidelity.com, Ameritrade, the Municipal Analysts Group of New York, IPREO, BondDesk, The Bond Market Association, Bloomberg, Reuters, and the State Debt Managers Network have selected The Consensussm as a key analytical benchmark of the municipal market.

Personal Background
Mr. Fabian has been a municipal analyst for thirteen years and is the author of The Weekly Outlooksm and a contributor to The Advisorsm . He has been with Municipal Market Advisors since July 2006 and is located in Westport, CT. Prior to his current position, Mr. Fabian spent two-and-a-half years as the lead municipal research analyst for UBS and headed up a group within UBS Wealth Management Research. Mr. Fabian was the prime resource on municipal bond research for the UBS network of nearly 7,500 US financial advisors, while also advising the company’s institutional trading and investment-banking clients. Mr. Fabian was also a research analyst with the UBS Municipal Securities Group for three years, an underwriting analyst with a bond insurer for four years, and a municipal rating analyst with Moody’s Investors Service for three years.

Mr. Fabian is currently on the Executive Board of the Municipal Analysts Group of New York and is a member of the National Federation of Municipal Analysts. He has been a featured speaker at numerous industry conferences on a wide range of topics. He is frequently quoted in the media, including The Bond Buyer, Bloomberg News, Reuters, Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times of London , BusinessWeek, Fortune, New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, thestreet.com, and investmentnews.com and has appeared on CNBC’s Closing Bell, Bloomberg Television, and NPR’s Marketplace. Mr. Fabian has a Masters of Public Administration degree from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and a Bachelors of Arts in Political Science from Penn State.

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Assured Guaranty Ltd. is a Bermuda-based holding company whose subsidiaries provide credit enhancement products to the capital markets through its three principal insurance subsidiaries: Assured Guaranty Corp., Assured Guaranty (UK) Ltd. and Assured Guaranty Re Ltd.


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Municipal Market Advisors is the leading independent strategy and consulting firm in the municipal bond industry. Our independence facilitates objective analysis and distinctive perspective of topical issues confronting the industry to ensure better decision making. The firm’s clientele is representative of leading dealer and investment firms as well as active municipal issuers.