Natalie Cohen

Managing Director and Head of Municipal Research, Wells Fargo

Natalie Cohen is managing director and head of municipal research, a coverage area that launched in late 2010 as part of the Global Economics and Research group, at Wells Fargo Securities. She was previously president of National Municipal Research, Inc., an independent consulting company focused on state and local fiscal condition. Prior to National Municipal Research, she was managing director at Financial Security Assurance, a bond insurance company. She has also held positions in high yield municipal bond insurance at Enhance Financial Service Group, now Radian, and American Capital Access. In addition to bond insurance, Natalie was a vice president at Moody’s Investors Service and supervising analyst at the New York City Office of Management and Budget. Natalie is well known for her studies and articles about municipal credit risk and bond defaults. While at Enhance Re, she authored the widely distributed Municipal Default Patterns: a Historical Study. She later authored and published the independent monthly trend letter Fiscal Stress Monitor. The Brookings Institution published her white paper: Business Location Decision-Making and the Cities: Bringing Companies Back. More recently, the Municipal Finance Journal published Municipal Bond Insurance: Past, Present and Future and When Market Risk becomes a Credit Factor, an article about crises in the short-term markets. She is a member of the Municipal Analysts Group of New York, has served on the board of the National Federation of Municipal Analysts, and has been a representative to the Governmental Accounting Standards Advisory Committee. Natalie holds a master’s degree in public administration from New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service and a BA from Hampshire College