Capital Financing
Our Mission | Capital Financing
O’Meara Ferguson leverages its experience and its relationships with the largest banking and investment banking firms to arrange capital financing for a broad range of capital projects. We use a competitive process to identify and select the best-suited capital providers as part of our effort to arrange the most economically advantageous financing. Once financing is obtained, O’Meara Ferguson works to ensure that its clients’ investment resources are matched to their obligations ensuring institutional discipline and program sustainability.
Methodology
O’Meara Ferguson believes that investment capital and capital campaign proceeds should not be used to reduce or eliminate properly structured debt or even to directly fund construction projects. Rather, capital resources should be leveraged to support appropriate financing, improve liquidity, produce investment income, and build endowments.
Staff Services
Too often excess capital is used to reduce or eliminate debt in an effort to avoid perceived risk and eliminate debt service payments.
The avoidance of debt does not, by itself, provide financial stability or reduce risk and, in fact, may leave an organization seriously cash constrained even after having just completed a successful capital campaign.
Featured Client
Diocese of Oakland (Oakland, CA)
Home to more than 500,000 Catholics in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, the Diocese of Oakland is comprised of 85 parishes, 11 pastoral centers, four specialized service centers, two homes for the aged and five specialized homes. Nearly 20,000 students are enrolled in nine Catholic high schools and 47 elementary schools.
As a part of the very culturally diverse East Bay region, more than 25 percent of parishioners are immigrants, and Mass is held in 17 languages across the Diocese. Additionally, as the largest private provider of social services across Alameda and Contra Costa counties, the Diocese provides shelter, meals, counseling, education, and other critical services free of charge to over 400,000 people of all faiths each year.
O’Meara Ferguson has a strong and successful relationship with the Diocese of Oakland. In 2007, serving as its financial adviser, O’Meara Ferguson assisted the Diocese in borrowing $114,700,000 through a taxable bond with Deutsche Bank. The majority of the funds went toward financing the Cathedral of Christ the Light, which was dedicated September 25, 2008.
Today, O’Meara Ferguson continues its financial advisory work, specifically in strategic planning and financial modeling. This includes working with the Diocese in actively managing their interest rate exposure to maximize cash flows to the chancery.
Results
More effective capital resource utilization coupled with a strategic use of debt has profound benefits that O’Meara Ferguson has been able to secure for its clients including:
- Properly represented credit profiles
- Improved credit and credit ratings
- Lower borrowing costs
- Longer planning horizons
- Supplemental investment income
- Growing endowments
- Strengthened liquidity
- Structured arbitrage opportunities
