REOF Capital launches financial research division
Antonio Sosa-Pascual (Credit: © Mauricio Pascual)
San Juan-based financial advisory firm REOF Capital is leveraging its in-depth knowledge of Puerto Rico market conditions to launch a financial research division specializing in bonds, managing director Antonio Sosa-Pascual announced.
The division’s first financial information product will provide quarterly bond research reports on key issuers of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, such as the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority and the Puerto Rico Sales Tax Financing Corporation (known as COFINA in Spanish.)
“About $70 billion of the U.S. bond market is Puerto Rican bond debt, yet current municipal bond analysts cover only about 80 percent of the information available,” said Sosa-Pascual. “This gap can be attributed to time lags, language and cultural barriers and a general lack of knowledge of management and operational track records of the issuers, and it is a liability for investors.”
“Our regular, independent and rigorous bond research will bridge that gap,” he added.
The REOF research team leverages access to multilevel data in Spanish for faster turnaround to the English speaking business community, and considers both diverse sources and the cultural and regulatory differences between the U.S. and Puerto Rico markets.
“Wouldn’t you triple check your research on a $70 billion market with a bilingual, on-the-ground analyst? This is our value proposition: eliminate cultural bias and provide objective analysis. Our goal is to complement existing research to fill that 20 percent gap with cost-effective analysis unparalleled in the municipal bond analyst community,” said Sosa-Pascual.
REOF Capital will issue five yearly reports with quarterly updates for each major bond issuer with deep commentary by a team led by Sosa-Pascual, an MIT Sloan School of Management and University of Chicago graduate with eight years of financial advisory experience and six years of economic policy experience at municipal, state and federal levels.
The research staff has a unique mix of talented recruits from top U.S..-based institutions and local finance programs with a profound understanding of Puerto Rico’s market conditions regulatory landscape and cultural issues.
REOF Capital also maintains close relationships in key U.S. and global financial markets, he said.
Research by REOF Capital will be published exclusively online to subscribers and is currently targeting institutional investors.
