Stepan Haytayan has over 25 years of experience serving public agency bond issuers, underwriters, lenders and credit enhancers. His practice includes bond offerings and federal loans for power, water and wastewater systems, transportation projects, community facilities district developments and other projects.  Before joining Norton Rose Fulbright, Stepan served at the California Attorney General's Office where he was legal counsel, then supervising legal counsel, to nearly all State of California bond financing programs, including multibillion dollar general obligation and cash-flow financings, water and power bonds, tobacco revenue securitizations, and conduit issuer bonds for healthcare, higher education, charter school, and pollution control facilities. His experience includes innovative financings, such as the development and validation of California's No Place Like Home program to finance supportive housing for homeless people coping with mental illness (The Bond Buyer Deal of the Year 2020) and a loan facility under the federal Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act for multistate climate resilience projects by the Metro Flood Diversion Authority in the metropolitan area of Fargo, North Dakota and Moorhead, Minnesota.

Stepan also has advised public agency clients on legislation, bond validation actions, open government and ethics laws, constitutional clauses governing sectarian aid, and grant program administration. While at the Office of the Attorney General he also supervised litigation on speech rights, firearms rights, and charter city autonomy.

Before entering public service, Stepan practiced public finance law at two major law firms. There he advised transaction participants in various types of debt financings for cities, counties, utilities, school districts, joint powers authorities, transportation and transit agencies, and other public agencies in California and Colorado.