Bruce Bonjour is chair of the firm’s Public Finance practice. Bruce previously served as co-chair of the firm’s Financial Transactions and Restructuring Group from 2005 to 2010. Bruce has two major areas of focus: real estate finance concentrating in the hospitality sector and municipal finance, serving as bond counsel as well as representing underwriters and credit enhancers.

Since 1996, when he served as bond counsel for the tax-exempt financing of an 800-room Hyatt Hotel located at McCormick Place in Chicago, Bruce has represented owners of business and luxury class hotels in financings in excess of $15 billion. Recent financings include transactions involving the acquisition, financing, refinancing, or restructuring of ownership of Hotel del Coronado, Scottsdale Fairmont Princess, The Homestead Resort, Barton Creek Spa & Resort, Grand Hotel (Mackinac Island), JW Marriott Essex House, Grove Park Inn, Ritz Carlton Hotels in Laguna Beach and Half Moon Bay California, Chicago Fairmont, Loews Santa Monica, Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, the Miami and Chicago InterContinental Hotels, Four Seasons Hotels in Washington D.C., Punta Mita and Hyatt La Jolla, Hotel Viking, Thompson Hotel Nashville, New Orleans Pontchartrain Hotel, Providence Biltmore Hotel, and all 28 Graduate Hotels.

Bruce serves as bond counsel and advises clients in tax-exempt and taxable municipal finance transactions. Recent transactions include serving as bond counsel for 10 U.S. Department of the Treasury's Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund-guaranteed series of bonds issued under the CDFI Bond Guarantee Program authorized by the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 (12 USC 1413a) totaling approximately $700 million. Earlier in his career, Bruce served as bond counsel or counsel for the underwriters for several high-profile projects, such as the multibillion-dollar expansion/renovation of McCormick Place and Navy Pier in Chicago, including the tax-exempt financing of the Hyatt Hotel at McCormick Place in 1996, bond counsel for the complete renovation of Soldier Field, and counsel to the underwriters for the refinancing of Comiskey Park.

Bruce Bonjour is the current chair of the firm’s Public Finance practice and former co-chair of the firm's Financial Transactions & Securitization practice.  For more than 30 years, Bruce has served as bond counsel and represented public and private clients in tax-exempt and taxable municipal finance transactions.  In 2013 Bruce served as sole bond counsel for a Midwest state in a tax-exempt/taxable tobacco asset-backed bond issue that refinanced tobacco bonds previously issued in 2002 in a transaction in which Bruce also served as sole bond counsel.  The purpose of the financing was to capitalize a permanent trust fund that generates annual distributions dedicated to enhances K-12 public education.  Bruce has served as bond counsel for several high-profile projects and programs, such as the multi-billion dollar expansion/renovation of McCormick Place and Navy Pier in Chicago, the tax-exempt financing (and refunding) of the Hyatt Hotel at McCormick Place in 1996, the $300 million tax-exempt financing of the complete renovation of Soldier Field, a $135 million tax increment financing of infrastructure and related costs of an intermodal park in Illinois, approximately $400 million of intermodal bonds under Section 142(m) of the Internal Revenue Code and in excess of $500 million of Clean Water and Drinking Water Bonds to capitalize a statewide revolving fund.  He has also served as bond counsel, underwriter’s counsel, credit enhancer’s counsel or issuer’s counsel in connection with a wide range of other tax-exempt financings for health, higher education, museum and infrastructure projects.