Experience

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  Ascending Markets Financial Guarantee Corporation (AMF)

  • Founder and Chief Executive Officer

    • 2010 - Mar 2022

    Ascending Markets Financial Guarantee Corporation (AMF), formerly known as Affinity MacroFinance, is an emerging market-focused financial guarantor formed to provide guarantees on debt obligations of sound development projects in infrastructure, healthcare, education and other essential public services, along with selected private sector obligations that have significant beneficial public impact. AMF’s business model won first-prize honors in March 2010 at the Marketplace in Innovative Finance, sponsored by the World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Agence Française de Développement. Moreover, AMF’s small and medium size enterprise financing program has won the early entry prize from Ashoka in the Ashoka/Rockefeller Foundation/G20 SME Financing Challenge. AMF is currently finalizing its capital raise from leading development finance institutions and private sector organizations.

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  DFGC

  • New York, New York, United States

  • Consultant

    • Jul 2004 - Jan 2022
    • New York, New York, United States

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  Independent

  • New York

  • Consultant

    • 2007 - 2009
    • New York

    - Developed a strategic plan for the US Department of Energy’s Loan Guarantee Program. - Developed an emerging market small and medium enterprise bond financing program with the Results for Development Institute, a Washington, DC-based NGO, for USAID.- Advised owners of downgraded former AAA bond insurer on causes of risk underwriting failures in that firm.- Consulted with private equity firms considering investing in downgraded bond insurance companies.

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  Capital Markets Development Corporation (CMDC)

  • New York

  • Founder and Chief Executive Officer

    • 2004 - 2009
    • New York

    Capital Markets Development Corporation (CMDC), the predecessor to AMF, was a development-stage financial guaranty insurance company focused on credit enhancement in the nascent fixed-income capital markets of emerging markets countries globally. CMDC’s investor group included a number of leading global insurance and reinsurance companies, private equity firmsand one social investor. CMDC had received A indicative ratings from two of the three major rating agencies, which would have allowed it to play the role of a AAA guarantor in the local currency capital markets of its target emerging market countries. CMDC failed to launch in 2007 due to the strains of the financial crisis.

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  XL Capital Assurance

  • Bermuda and New York

  • Chief Executive Officer, President

    • 1999 - 2004
    • Bermuda and New York

    Mr. Stevens served first as President and later as CEO of XL Capital Assurance, a New York-based AAA-rated financial guaranty insurance company between 1999-2004. During his tenure at XLCA, the Company grew to become the fourth largest AAA-rated US bond insurer, with a staff of 135 professionals and approximately $65Bn in insured obligations. XLCA focused more heavily than its competitors on emerging market transactions, closing deals in Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Jamaica, Korea, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Turkey, among other countries. Mr. Stevens resigned in 2004, when XLCA was still a AAA firm, in order to pursue his interest in the emerging markets. In run-off, XLCA is now known as Syncora Corporation.

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  MBIA Insurance Company

  • Armonk, New York

  • Assistant to the CEO, Senior Vice President

    • 1990 - 1999
    • Armonk, New York

    From 1990-1999, Mr. Stevens worked at MBIA Insurance Corporation, the largest firm in the financial guarantee industry. During that period, Mr. Stevens was charged with working out problem credits within the public and structured finance portfolios of MBIA; developing the company’s Latin American business, which included closing the industry’s first emerging markets local currency-denominated infrastructure development transactions; and serving on the firm’s senior management policy and credit committees.

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  First Interstate Bancorp

  • Greater Los Angeles Area

  • Vice President, Manager

    • 1986 - 1990
    • Greater Los Angeles Area

    Managed corporate lending portfolio of super-regional bank and served as lead banker for two Californian power utilities.

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  Bank of America

  • New York and Los Angeles

  • Assistant Vice President

    • 1983 - 1986
    • New York and Los Angeles

    Lent to corporations in the mining, telecommunications and utilities industries.

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  North Carolina Agency for Public Telecommunications

  • Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina Area

  • Director of Development

    • 1978 - 1981
    • Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina Area

    Managed public radio activities and directed fund-raising activities for state telecom policy agency.

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  State of North Carolina

  • Durham, NC

  • English and Journalism Teacher

    • 1973 - 1978
    • Durham, NC

    Taught secondary school in Durham and community college in Henderson.