Founded in New York in 1993, Rice Financial provides services to municipalities and not-for-profit institutions in four key areas:

• Structuring and underwriting
• Municipal sales and trading
• Taxable fixed income investing
• Derivative products

Structuring & Underwriting

Rice Financial’s investment banking professionals have a reputation and demonstrated track record for innovative problem solving that set them apart from their peers. The firm’s bankers leverage decades of experience and financial creativity to help customers develop tailored solutions to their unique financing needs.

Beginning in 2006, Rice Financial dramatically increased its presence in the municipal bond business by hiring a number of municipal finance professionals with extensive senior managed bond underwriting experience, opening new offices in Atlanta, Hoboken, Kansas City, Sacramento, Tampa and Washington, DC, and expanding its presence in Chicago and New York. That year, Rice Financial was a managing underwriter on $7.7 billion in municipal bonds. In 2009, the firm served as a managing underwriter on issues totaling $33.7 billion - a 438%
increase in just three years.

Municipal Sales & Trading

Rice Financial’s Municipal Sales and Trading Group consists of senior professionals dedicated exclusively to the municipal market, selling both tax-exempt and taxable bonds. They cover property and casualty insurance companies, arbitrage funds, bond funds, trust departments, financial advisors and retail customers. Rice Financial’s salespeople average more than 25 years of experience and are consistently ranked by their institutional accounts in the top 10 for coverage performance.

Taxable Fixed Income Group

Rice Financial’s Taxable Fixed Income Group (TFIG) offers municipal clients investment services, including liquidity management, reinvestment of bond proceeds, investment structuring and debt service management. Rice’s relationships with the Government Sponsored Enterprises allow the firm to structure and provide competitive investments for its municipal clients. The professionals in this area are specialists in designing custom investments for state and local governments, often utilizing a reverse inquiry process by which they work with the GSEs to create specific structures tailored to their municipal customers’ particular investment needs. In 2006, Rice’s TFIG professionals sold $4.1 billion in par amount. They more than tripled that amount in 2009, selling a total of $15.7 billion in taxable fixed income securities.

Derivative Products

Rice Financial Products Company is one of the most experienced firms on Wall Street in structuring and executing municipal interest rate swaps. The firm serves as a direct counterparty to municipal issuers and provides clients a “AA” or better counterparty rating. Since inception, Rice Financial has executed derivative transactions totaling nearly $30 billion aggregate notional amount. Many of these transactions were industry innovations, such as:

• First ever fixed-to-floating swap with a state-level entity in the U.S., $35 million, Texas Veterans Land Board
• Largest ever long-dated fixed-to-floating swap and first actual fixed rate fixed-to-floating swap, $183 million, Dade County, FL
• Largest competitive swap purchased by a single dealer in 2007 (forward starting SIFMA floating to fixed swap), $415 million, Cook County, IL
• First ever collared constant maturity swap, $205 million, Miami-Dade County, FL