Columbia Capital Management, LLC (Columbia) was formed in 1996 to provide municipal bond issuers with a strong, independent alternative to receiving financial advice from investment banks. Through its service to a broad range of issuers in the Midwest, East, and South, Columbia has gained a reputation for excellence of advice, thoroughness of approach, and creativity in problem solving. For a tour of the firm and its capabilities, click here.
Financial Advisory Services
Since 2000, Columbia has provided financial advisory services on more than $11.5 billion of bonds including fixed and variable rate, new money and refunding, in areas including general obligation, revenue, annual appropriation, transportation, toll/turnpike, mass transit, parking, housing, pension, unemployment and water utilities. In addition, Columbia has assisted issuers in evaluating various derivative products including floating-to-fixed rate swaps, forward starting swaps and interest rate locks. Among its clients, Columbia serves or has served as financial advisor to a wide variety of issuers, from state governments to regional authorities to major cities to small suburban communities.
Investment Advisory Services
In addition to its financial advisory services, Columbia also maintains an active investment advisory practice. Columbia is a Registered Investment Advisor with the US Securities and Exchange Commmission and manages significant short-term municipal portfolios. In addition, Columbia serves municipal bond issuers as a broker for various types of investment agreements for bond proceeds. These agreements include collateralized and uncollateralized investment agreements, forward delivery agreements, and construction fund investment contracts and repurchase agreements. Columbia has brokered more than $6.5 billion of these investments since 2000.
Firm Expertise
Les Bond and Dennis Lloyd, Columbia's principals, bring a combined 40 years of public finance experience, both as investment bankers and as financial advisors. Columbia's support team includes individuals with strong public finance expertise, along with backgrounds in law, bank trust, public works administration, economics, and general municipal administration.
Columbia is equally adept at providing quality advice and value added from the smallest "plain vanilla" general obligation deal to the most complicated structure. Our breadth of expertise, including work with variable rate bonds, interest rate swaps, sophisticated repayment stream modeling, investment management and structured products placement, allows us to provide the highest quality advice to our clients. Columbia is truly a full-service financial and investment advisory firm.
Independence
Because Columbia has no ties to or relationships with any broker-dealer, we can provide absolutely independent, objective advice to our clients. Columbia does not suffer from the intrinsic conflicts of interest that exist with underwriters providing financial advisory services.