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 professionals have provided consulting services on a broad range of redevelopment projects throughout New Jersey.  The types of redevelopment projects for which our professionals have provided financial advisory services include commercial, housing, retail, recreational, parking, transportation, and mixed-use development. In connection with these projects, Acacia has assisted with the negotiation of redevelopment, financial and tax abatement agreements and provided advice relating to the structuring and financing of redevelopment projects including security agreements and financial assistance contracts by public entities.

The structural complexity of even the most basic redevelopment project requires a wide range of financial expertise and the experience of how these skills should be applied.  Acacia develops in-house financial models that are tailored specifically to each transaction we assist with.  Our experience of having assisted on many types of redevelopment projects gives us the ability to create models that have the built-in flexibility to evaluate various scenarios based on different project and financing assumptions. Acacia’s models evaluate internal rate of returns of the proposed project, compares construction costs and rents (when applicable) and compares future PILOT payments with that of estimated conventional future taxes and if applicable evaluates fiscal impacts of the project on the municipality. Acacia’s professionals have the necessary experience and technical capabilities to help our clients successfully achieve their redevelopment goals.

In addition to pro-forma modeling, where appliable, Acacia assists with plan of finance development and transaction execution.  We have extensive experience utilizing the bond structures available under the New Jersey Redevelopment Area Bond financing statutes (N.J.S.A. 40A:12A-64 et seq.) and specifically we have assisted with the issuance of Redevelopment Area Bonds (RABs), New Market Tax Credits Security, Public Private-Partnerships (P3) and General Revenue Bond Issues.