MWAA Picks Team for Up to $600M of Rail Bonds

WASHINGTON — The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority yesterday announced a financing team for $250 million to $600 million of bonds it plans to sell in the spring to help finance the Dulles International Airport Metrorail extension.

Citi and Morgan Stanley were named senior underwriters for the 2010 Dulles corridor enterprise financing at the MWAA’s first board meeting of the year, after serving in the same role for the authority’s initial Metrorail extension deal in August.

The new-money revenue bonds are expected to be priced in May. Co-managers will be announced later, officials said yesterday.

The structure of the deal has not been finalized, though they will “more than likely” be sold as Build America Bonds, said Lynn Hampton, vice president and chief financial officer at the authority.

In August, the MWAA sold $563 million of tax-exempt revenue bonds, $365 million of which were insured by Assured Guaranty Corp., and $400 million of BABs supported by the Dulles Toll Road for Metrorail construction.

The financing team for the new issue will consist of some of the same firms involved in the August deal.

Mercator Advisors LLC and Frasca and Associates LLC will be co-financial advisers. Nixon Peabody LLP, which represented the underwriters in the earlier deal, will be bond counsel and disclosure counsel.

Also at the board meeting, the MWAA announced that, later this year, it will issue commercial paper that will be exempt from the alternative minimum tax under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The paper will be used to finance aviation projects.

The Metrorail construction is expected to cost $5.26 billion, including $2.9 billion of debt. Construction on the Metrorail extension began last March following $900 million in funding from the Federal Transportation Authority.

Phase one of the project, which will include five new stations, is expected to be finished by December 2013.

Phase two, which will connect the Metro to Dulles Airport and include six new stations, is to be completed by December 2016.

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Transportation industry Washington Virginia
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