Our professionals have provided financial advisory services for a variety of government entities including state and state-level authorities and agencies, county and county-level authorities, municipalities and municipal authorities, school districts, fire districts, and regional authorities. Acacia has consistently ranked among the top financial advisors on a national basis. Acacia routinely advises our clients with competitive and negotiated transactions, private placements, general obligation and revenue backed bonds, fixed and variable rate securities, note issuances, and several others.

The Acacia team is uniquely qualified to assist their clients in developing and executing any finance plan to minimize interest cost and maximize flexibility, while achieving financial objectives. Acacia takes an active role in assisting its clients in the structuring and the execution of bond transactions. Our professionals assist their clients in considering alternative financing opportunities and in evaluating their benefits, risks, the credit implications.

Acacia is experienced in the execution of both competitive and negotiated sale transactions. For competitive transactions, Acacia will run all bond sizings and provide advice on the appropriate bid parameters based on then prevailing market conditions. For a negotiated sale, Acacia will advise the client on the benefits of offering bonds to retail, tailor couponing to specific investor interests and the flexibility on the sale date to respond to changing market conditions. Our professionals will provide sensitivity analysis on various structuring options such as call provisions, couponing variations and final maturity, balancing yield with call flexibility. Additionally, Acacia will prepare detailed cash-flows and verify all final numbers prepared by the underwriter.

Acacia’s debt assistance also includes the preparation and review of financing documents, the coordination of presentations to rating agencies and the investor community, and comprehensive debt portfolio management with a focus for large scale policy objectives.

Our professionals have been able to apply our extensive quantitative expertise to strategic consulting engagements such as multi-year plans, management assessments, early retirement feasibility studies, energy conversation analysis, regionalization studies, acquisition studies, public-private partnership studies, economic impact studies and capital/budget planning and development.

Our professionals’ experience and ability to analyze operations and services, along with their associated fiscal impacts, is clear. Projects are delivered with fees and on a timetable consistent with those agreed upon with the client. Consulting services are often uniquely designed to address the specific challenges facing any given client.

With the use of derivative products among municipal bond issuers, the major auditing firms, government regulators, rating agencies, bond insurers and institutional investors have come to expect periodic valuations, reports and policy review from a qualified, independent derivative specialist. Acacia’s professionals understand the importance of prompt, accessible and accurate information concerning each client’s outstanding swap portfolio, which enables them to address all policy, rating agency, regulatory, accounting and legislative concerns. We are equally aware of our clients’ need to receive professional consultation on market opportunities and risks on a continuing and periodic basis.

We work closely with clients in evaluating alternative financing structures. The analysis for swap agreements and other derivative products will generally include the performance of financing structures over various projected interest rate scenarios. Our professionals have served as advisors for a variety of derivative products such as forward purchase and sale agreements, re-purchase agreements, swaps, swaptions and forward/warrant agreements.

As swap advisors, Acacia has the ability to price spot and forward starting swaps, basis swaps, total return swaps, CAPS and swaptions, including European, Bermudan and American options. Acacia employs a broad range analysis fed by real-time market data from a number of industry sources including Bloomberg. Our system capabilities and in-house market expertise include the ability to model any derivative product used in the municipal markets. We employ proprietary software which calculates the derivative valuations. In addition, we have several other proprietary models and our own in-house models and notification tools which enable us to better value and monitor swap transactions.

Acacia Investment Advisory Group, Inc. (“AIAG”) is an independent women-owned Investment Adviser affiliated with Acacia Financial Group, Inc. (“Acacia”), who has served as municipal advisor to numerous governmental entities in New Jersey. Through their affiliation with Acacia, AIAG’s professionals have leveraged their extensive municipal industry experience to develop a comprehensive understanding of the nuances specific to investing public funds. AIAG has teamed with Detalus Advisors (“Detalus” together with AIAG, “the Team”) to form an experienced partnership that capitalizes on the specific proficiencies of each firm to provide comprehensive and effective investment management strategies. The dynamic collaboration of the Team creates a combination of issuer knowledge, market savvy, analytical skills and industry relationships.