By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

THE finance team from Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., an underwriters group that secured a $100 million tax exempt bond financing for the CNMI government, will meet with senators and a business group to share their bond expertise with Guam.
Lehman Brothers’s attorney Thomas Foley and Sean Keatts will meet with senators at 10 a.m. today in a roundtable discussion called by the committee on banking and insurance at the public hearing room of the Guam Legislature.
Members of the Guam Hospital Development Forum, a nonprofit organization founded by businessman Peter Sgro, will meet with Foley and Keatts at the Chuchuko Room of the Guam Hilton Hotel at 2 p.m. tomorrow.
The meeting with the Lehman Brothers team “gives us a golden opportunity to tap into the expertise of these individuals to ask questions about current market conditions, how triple tax exempt financing is achieved, and the application of the recent U.S. Supreme Court debt ceiling case to any government of Guam general obligation bond financing,” committee chairman Sen. Jesse A. Lujan, R-Tamuning, said.
Bond borrowing has been a problematic issue for Guam, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on GovGuam’s borrowing ceiling.
The CNMI government, on the other hand, has been able to raise a substantial amount of capital by refinancing its bonds despite its own financial mess. Foley and Keatts were credited for the CNMI’s success in getting the triple tax exempt financing scheme.
Sgros’s group is in the process of developing a 120-bed hospital to be funded by private investors.
Tomorrow’s meeting will provide updates on the Forum’s efforts with potential investors and tackle financing options for the hospital project. The forum will also discuss the impact of Guam’s MIP on investor relations and Guam’s health care system.