vacarri82.gif

Michael Vaccari

Partner

Michael A. Vaccari is the Co-Head of the firm’s Infrastructure Finance Team and a Deputy Group Leader of the Public Finance Group of Nixon Peabody LLP. With 30 years of experience, he has served as counsel in hundreds of financings covering a broad range of projects and finance structures, including transportation, housing and derivatives. He represents the United States Department of Transportation on its TIFIA credit assistance program and advised USDOT on the drafting and structuring of its template loan documentation published in 2008 and the original legal and program documents that created the TIFIA Program. He represented USDOT as a subordinate lender on the first transportation PPP project in the United States (SR 125), the first transportation PABs and HOT lanes financing (Capital Beltway), the first refinancing under SAFETEA-LU (Pocahontas Parkway), on SH 130 – a $1.3 billion toll road privatization in Texas, Triangle Expressway in North Carolina and the rental car facility at Miami International Airport. In addition, he represented lenders and underwriters on one of the bidding teams for the I-595 PPP project in Florida, on I-635 in Texas and on two of the finalist bidding teams for the NYSDOT PPP RFP.Mr. Vaccari represented New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority on the largest debt restructuring in history. The MTA’s program involved $14.5 billion of bonds in 18 transactions over a 7 month period. He has served as counsel on over $2 billion of swap transactions for MTA, AIG SunAmerica, Freddie Mac and USDOT. Prior to joining Nixon Peabody LLP, he was Deputy Executive Director, General Counsel and Secretary of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the largest transportation provider in the country. Mr. Vaccari began his legal career in public finance with the New York City Law Department in 1978. Four years later, he joined the public finance group at the law firm of Brown & Wood, where he remained until joining the MTA.