Amanda Stephens
Partner
Houston
Amanda Stephens focuses her practice on public finance, where she serves as bond counsel, disclosure counsel, underwriters' counsel, issuer’s counsel and bank’s counsel in connection with a broad range of taxable and tax-exempt transactions including education, nonprofit corporations and healthcare.
Amanda has advised on more than $4 billion of both publicly-offered and privately-placed charter school financings. Her work on these financings extends across the country, including Texas, Florida, Tennessee, California, Arizona and New York, among many others. Amanda works with a first-of-its-kind nonprofit social impact fund that leverages private charter loans to the public market. Since their creation in 2018, Amanda has worked on documenting more than $1 billion in loans to high-performing charter schools who do not otherwise have access to long term, low cost financing. Amanda and team are tasked with working with the local borrower’s counsel for each new borrower and each new state to create a financing structure that meets the long term needs of the borrower, while conforming with state charter law and the clients lending requirements. Amanda has also created structures to help with taxable refundings, to finance around existing new market tax credit structures and many other needs of the borrowers.
Amanda also represents banks and other financial institutions in connection with direct purchases of tax-exempt bonds and the issuance of letters of credit and other liquidity facilities in connection with tax-exempt transactions.
Over the course of her career, Amanda has prepared, negotiated and reviewed contracts, loan documents, amendments, closing documents, default letters, demand letters, payoff and buyout agreements, intercreditor subordination agreements, and federal tax lien subordinations. She also has reviewed client contracts and MSA agreements in the oil and gas, construction, medical, retail and transportation industries, and she has addressed regulatory and compliance issues for the finance industry and oil and gas industry. Amanda previously served as an in-house attorney for a national financial services company. She also has served as a staff attorney for Judge Jaclanel McFarland of the 133rd Civil District Court in Harris County, Texas, and as assistant district attorney for the Harris County District Attorney’s office.
