Future Insight: 2020 Municipal Bond Market

Stephen Czepiel leads the portfolio management of the firm’s municipal bonds strategies, a role he assumed in February 2019. He is a co-portfolio manager of the firm’s municipal bond funds and client accounts, a role he has held since August 2007. He joined Macquarie Investment Management in July 2004 as a senior bond trader. Previously, he was vice president at both Mesirow Financial and Loop Capital Markets. He began his career in the securities industry in 1982 as a municipal bond trader at Kidder Peabody and now has more than 20 years of experience in the municipal securities industry.

R. B. (Guy) Davidson III is Chief Investment Officer of Municipal Business. He joined the firm as director of Municipal Bonds in 1992, and under his leadership, the assets under management of the municipal business have grown from less than $1 billion to more than $44 billion today. Davidson is Chairman of the Tax-Exempt Fixed Income Investment Policy Group, which determines portfolio strategy and investment policies for all municipal products. Before joining the firm, he was vice president and head of municipal strategies at J.P. Morgan Securities and an associate economist at Lehman Brothers. Davidson is the author of “The Value of Tax Management for Bond Portfolios,” published in The Journal of Private Portfolio Management, Spring 1999; “Maximizing Expected After-Tax Returns,” published by Probus in 1994 in the Handbook of Municipal Bonds; and “Analyzing Quality Spreads,” published in The Municipal Finance Journal in 1991. He was named to the Institutional Investor’s All-America Research Team in 1992. Davidson holds a BA with honors from the College of Social Studies within Wesleyan University and an MBA from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University. Location: New York

Catherine Stienstra is head of Municipal Bond Investments and a senior municipal portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle Investments. She manages the suite of strategic municipal income strategies, high yield municipal strategy and a range of national and state specific strategies. Previously, She was a senior portfolio manager at FAF Advisors, Inc. (formerly U.S. Bancorp Asset Management) for 17 years, where she managed a number of national short term, state specific and closed end municipal strategies. She joined one of the Columbia Threadneedle Investments legacy firms in 2007. She has been a member of the investment community since 1988.