Robyn Helmlinger is a transactional lawyer who is nationally known for her representation of issuers, borrowers and underwriters involved in issuing municipal bonds. Robyn specializes in the healthcare, museum and educational sectors. She is the lawyer to whom chief financial officers and treasurers turn when they require expertise in implementing complex financings and debt programs and to whom investment bankers turn when they are developing new financial structures. Just as important as her expertise, people enjoy working with Robyn. Clients rely on her leadership abilities to achieve an issuer’s objectives, but laud her collaborative approach because it results in efficient and effective transactions.

Robyn developed her expertise in emerging financial structures during the late 1990s when she assisted a multistate healthcare system in restructuring bonds into a new variable rate product and, thereafter, was engaged by a national investment bank to develop model procedures for that product. Since that time, Robyn has been regularly called on by both established borrowers and first-time borrowers to assist with structuring and restructuring debt programs. Following the credit crisis that began in late 2007, Robyn represented one of the largest nonprofit healthcare systems in the country in a multiyear restructuring of its variable rate bonds and derivative products, as well as continued financing of its ongoing capital projects. In total, the financings aggregated more than $2 billion. Robyn also is continually recognized for her excellent and sound judgment with respect to disclosure issues, including the difficult disclosure decisions caused by pension liabilities, governmental inquiries and investigations, labor disputes and qualified audit opinions.
As a member of the National Association of Bond Lawyers, Robyn has been a panelist on the Health Care Financing Panel at the annual conference in 2003, 2004 and 2006.

Representative Experience

• Serving as bond counsel in connection with a forward-delivery direct placement and derivative product for a nonprofit borrower. Robyn was able to achieve the client’s objective to avoid the cost and business disruption associated with a full diligence process at the time of delivery of the bonds by successfully negotiating the scope of a qualified bond counsel opinion. Ÿ 
• Assisting two statewide conduit issuers in developing issuance guidelines and creating model transaction documents for their bond programs. Robyn drew upon her extensive experience in the nonprofit borrowing community to assist the issuers in developing guidelines and model document provisions that were tailored to protect the issuers in the areas where they could experience liability, yet provide clear and certain transaction parameters to the borrowing community.Ÿ 
• Amending bond documents to accommodate additional credit enhancement in the form of a direct-pay letter of credit. By carefully drafting the amendments and working collaboratively with the letter of credit bank, a letter of credit was substituted for a liquidity facility without triggering a tax reissuance. Robyn, therefore, met the client’s goal of restructuring the credit and liquidity enhancement without necessitating a new diligence process.Ÿ 
• Serving as underwriter’s counsel in connection with bonds issued to refinance the acquisition of multiple projects, each owned by one of several borrowers. The cash flows supporting the financing were highly complex because they came from a variety of governmental and public sector sources. Robyn worked with all of the financing participants, including representatives of each borrower, their legal counsel and auditors, and the operators of each project to understand the nature of each revenue source and the contractual relationships underlying the payment obligations so that all such information, as well as the related risks, could be conveyed in the disclosure document.