SAN JUAN – The office of Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, La Fortaleza, has announced that he has appointed Daniel Heimowitz, Richard Kolman and Alexandre Zyngier to the Puerto Rico Sales Tax Financing Corp.’s (Cofina by its Spanish acronym) board effective Feb. 12.

The new board held its first meeting Feb. 12, after a plan of debt adjustment for Cofina became the first under Title III of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (Promesa) to be achieved. About $12 billion of restructured sales tax revenue bonds was issued that day as well.

La Fortaleza said the new board members are “highly qualified and nationally respected individuals, bringing tremendous municipal finance experience and sophistication to COFINA:

  • Daniel Heimowitz. Mr. Heimowitz is the founder and chief executive officer of Verify Financial, a start-up firm that uses credit views, peer sourced from institutional investors, to enhance traditional credit grading. Mr. Heimowitz’s forty-plus-year career has been in public finance credit ratings and investment banking, having held senior positions at Moody’s, Lehman Brothers, and RBC Capital Markets. Throughout his career, he has been an active municipal market participant as a member of The Municipal Analyst Group of New York, The National Federation of Municipal Analysts, and The Society of Municipal Analysts, and as a past member of the Government Accounting Standards Advisory Council and President of the Municipal Forum of New York. Mr. Heimowitz served on the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) from 2012 to 2014 and was MSRB’s Chairman in 2014.
  • Richard Kolman. Mr. Kolman presently serves as the head of the municipal group and member of the firm-wide operating committee for Academy Securities, a military and disabled veteran-owned investment bank. Following a twenty-five year career with Goldman Sachs, Mr. Kolman left his position in 2007 as co-head of the municipal department at Goldman Sachs to serve as vice chairman of the Municipal and Infrastructure Assurance Corporation until 2010, when Mr. Kolman became a managing director and head of the municipal securities group at US Bank. Mr. Kolman left his position at US Bank in 2016 for his current role at Academy Securities. Mr. Kolman has served on the executive committee of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) and received the SIFMA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007. He also was a member of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board from 1996 to 1999 and is presently a member of the municipal executive committee for SIFMA. For over fifteen years, Mr. Kolman has served on the board of managers for the East Side House Settlement, a community-based organization serving the Mott Haven district of the South Bronx. He presently serves as treasurer and chair of the Finance Community.
  • Alexandre Zyngier. Mr. Zyngier has over twenty years of investment, strategy, and operating experience. In 2013, Mr. Zyngier founded Batuta Advisors to pursue investment and advisory opportunities in both the public and private markets. Mr. Zyngier has extensive experience serving on boards of directors. He is currently a director of Atari SA, Torchlight Energy Resources, Inc., AudioEye Inc., Applied Minerals, Inc., and certain other private entities. he was previously the chairman of the board of Vertis Inc., a director of Island One LLC and executive chairman of DTV America Corporation. Mr. Zyngier holds an MBA in Finance and Accounting from the University of Chicago and a BSc in Chemical Engineering from UNICAMP in Brazil.”