Arthur Cohen

Arthur is an economic development, government finance and project finance attorney who has served as bond counsel, underwriters’ counsel and borrower’s counsel for varied projects and financings throughout the country. Arthur’s legal career of more than 40 years has been spent entirely at Hawkins, and he attributes his success to a combination of a strong work ethic coupled with great personal satisfaction with his practice, his clients and the firm.

Arthur’s clients include major conduit bond issuers of revenue bonds, focusing in the area of economic development, as well as national and regional investment banking firms and not-for-profit educational institutions. His legal advice is often sought not only in the transactions in which he has provided legal services, but also for those in which parties’ expectations or commitments failed to be realized. He has negotiated prominent tax benefit transactions on behalf of governmental agencies pursuant to which job commitments from large employers are tied to the conferral (and recapture) of local tax exemptions. Arthur takes particular pride in his ability to successfully understand, structure, negotiate and timely close highly complex transactions, and in so doing, achieve his clients’ objectives while earning other counsels (and their clients) respect and cooperation. Arthur served as underwriters’ counsel for financings for One Bryant Park in Times Square, and 7 World Trade Center, in a combined collateralized mortgage backed security and tax-exempt financing of major commercial office buildings.

Having worked in Lower Manhattan his entire career, including during the tragedy of 9/11, Arthur was deeply motivated and proud to act as underwriters’ counsel for the financing of the reconstruction of Tower 7, Tower 4 and Tower 3 of the World Trade Center; all of these financings were highly complex in their real estate and contractual structure, and presented novel issues and challenges.

Arthur regularly lectures and teaches before varied audiences, and takes great pride in both disseminating valuable information, while using his sense of humor to keep his audience awake and interested.