Richard B. "Rick" Stephens Jr.

Richard B. Stephens, Jr. is a partner in Holland & Knight's Lakeland office. Mr. Stephens divides his time between tax exempt financings and a diverse corporate practice. On the corporate side, Mr. Stephens has extensive experience in large corporate transactions focusing on the gas, power, cement and road based industries (including structured products, prepaid gas transactions, financings, derivatives, acquisitions, mergers, and general contract drafting). He also has significant experience in the healthcare field, providing financing services to hospitals and cancer centers, and serves as general counsel for two large Florida healthcare group practice clinics, providing general counseling, transactional and corporate services. Mr. Stephens has also had extensive experience in solid waste resource recovery and compost projects including negotiation of power sales agreements, wheeling contracts, waste processing and service agreements and related documents.

On the tax-exempt side Mr. Stephens has been involved as bond counsel, disclosure counsel, swap counsel or special counsel to city and county governments, districts and authorities in virtually all types of municipal and industrial development projects including airports, port facilities, stadium complexes and arenas, convention centers, hospitals and healthcare facilities, hotels, water and sewer facilities, city hall projects, housing issues, and a variety of other infrastructure projects. He has also had extensive experience in innovative financings involving floating and fixed rate bonds, auction bonds, caps, collars, swaps, multimodal and shifting lien bonds, commercial paper, forward purchase contracts, and the like. He has been involved in more than 50 issues involving more than $4,000,000,000 over the last five years.