Rhode Island Treasury launches bond investor portal

Rhode Island General Treasurer Seth Magaziner has launched RhodeIslandBonds.com, a dedicated information platform for bond investors.

"This new web portal offers a new, more transparent and user-friendly way to provide investors with information about state and municipal bond offerings," said Magaziner, who opened the site Thursday.

Rhode Island General Treasurer Seth Magaziner

The site, which features thousands of pages of data and documents, provides information to institutional and retail bond investors, as well as credit rating agencies, said Magaziner, as well as insight into the credit fundamentals behind Rhode Island's bond ratings.

He said the goal is to attract more investors to Rhode Island's bond program.

According to the website, Rhode Island has $2.4 billion of bonds outstanding.

Rhode Island Treasury contracted with BondLink, whose chief executive is Colin MacNaught, a former Massachusetts deputy treasurer for debt management. BondLink powers similar programs for other issuers, including California, Chicago and recently, Boston.

Magaziner last year released a debt affordability study that he called the most comprehensive for the state. It set new debt affordability targets for the first time since 1999.

In 2016, he conducted the state's first competitive sale of tax-exempt bonds in nearly a decade, resulting in $2.7 million of net savings in debt service costs.

Moody's Investors Service rates Rhode Island's general obligation bonds Aa2. Fitch Ratings and S&P Global Ratings assign AA. All three assign stable outlooks.

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Municipal disclosure State of Rhode Island Rhode Island
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