New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority completed its first bond transaction that minority- and women-owned firms managed and underwrote entirely, the agency announced Monday.
The Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority issuance on April 12 raised $231 million for approved capital projects for MTA Bridges and Tunnels. They are tax-exempt with a final maturity of Nov. 15, 2043. The all-in true interest cost of the transaction was 3.71% with the maximum maturity priced to yield 3.8%.
Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor’s rate the bonds AA-minus, while Kroll Bond Rating Agency rates them AA and Moody’s Investors Service assigns an Aa3 rating.
“It was a very successful transaction,” MTA finance manager Patrick McCoy told the board’s finance committee on Monday.
Book-running senior manager Ramirez & Co., together with special co-senior manager Duncan-Williams Inc., led a syndicate of eight underwriting firms. Also involved were senior co-manager Siebert Brandford Shank & Co. LLC, and co-managers CastleOak Securities, Lebenthal & Co. LLC, Loop Capital Markets LLC, M.R. Beal & Co. and Rice Financial Products.
“We strongly support Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s directive that at least 20% of all state procurements are awarded to New York State-certified minority-owned/women-owned businesses,” said MTA interim executive director Thomas Prendergast, whom Cuomo has nominated to be chairman, subject to state Senate approval.
The firms that underwrote the transaction were authorized to work for the MTA in December 2010, when the MTA board approved a pool of 26 firms to underwrite MTA bonds. That action dramatically increased both the number of underwriters on MTA deals and the percentage of those firms that are minority- or women-owned.
