Sage Memorial Hospital won The Bond Buyer's 24th annual Deal of the Year award for its $80 million offering of unrated tax-exempt bonds
Sage Memorial Hospital won The Bond Buyer's 24th annual Deal of the Year award for its $80 million offering of unrated tax-exempt bonds that recapitalized construction of a replacement hospital, an expanded outpatient clinic and badly needed workforce housing serving the Navajo community in Ganado, Arizona.
The project — which was financed by hospital revenue bonds offered through conduit issuer Arizona Industrial Development Authority also won Deal of the Year in the Health Care Financing category — restores nearby access to surgery, dialysis, intensive care, and labor and delivery, turning structural barriers on reservation land into a platform for long-term, community-centered care. Crucially, the team leveraged Sage's status as a tribal contractor to pledge non-traditional revenue agreements alongside net patient revenues, opening a replicable path to market for indigenous health systems.
"This selection speaks to the heart of what these awards celebrate," said Mike Scarchilli, Editor in Chief of The Bond Buyer, at Tuesday's gala. "It is not simply the size of a transaction, nor is it novelty for novelty's sake. It is the clarity of purpose, the precision of structure and the courage to open a door that has too often been closed. This transaction stood out for transforming access into outcomes and financial ingenuity into community impact."
The deal represents a major landmark in furthering Native American healthcare infrastructure as tribal governments face hurdles when issuing munis, including tax code restrictions, limited tools and land ownership issues. The transaction also demonstrates a non-profit healthcare provider's ability to leverage nontraditional revenue sources — enabled by tribal contractor status — to secure tax-exempt munis.
The Bond Buyer's editors and senior reporters considered a range of factors when judging entries, including: creativity, the ability to pull a complex transaction together under challenging conditions, the ability to serve as a model for other financings and the public purpose for which a deal's proceeds were used. Common characteristics of Deal of the Year award-winning transactions include:
Deals for new issuers, credits created to meet a specific or ongoing financing need, or issuers that have been substantially transformed so that they appear new to investors and function as a new credit from a portfolio manager's perspective.
"Turnaround stories" from issuers that were either long absent from the market or unable to gain market access.
Deals that establish new types of security, harness previously untapped revenue sources, or open a new sector to financing.
Deals that create a new type of financing for a traditional area of government, bringing new resources to an area where other options were unavailable because of revenue or political obstacles.
Refundings or restructurings that either achieved an otherwise unattainable savings or indenture change goal for the issuer or use derivatives or other financial tools to reduce risk and/or total debt-service cost.
Deals that set a record in terms of total dollar size or number of participating issuers or attract significant interest from non-traditional investors in municipal finance.
Sage Memorial Hospital's Deal of the Year winner "embodies those characteristics in especially meaningful ways," Scarchilli said.
"[The deal] delivered permanent, long-term financing for a mission-critical community facility," Scarchilli said. "It relied on a structure that broadened market access, even without external ratings; it aligned repayment with real operating performance while thoughtfully incorporating targeted support; and it advanced essential services in a place where distance and history have long imposed barriers. Most importantly, it charts a replicable path for others facing similar challenges."
The awards ceremony, held Dec. 2 at Guastavino's in New York City, also included, for the 15th year, the presentation of the Freda Johnson Awards for Trailblazing Women in Public Finance. This year marks the 13th in which the organization honored public finance professionals from both the public and private sectors with Freda Johnson awards. The 2025 honorees were Jeanette W. Weldon, executive director of the Connecticut Health and Educational Facilities Authority, for the public sector, and Elaine Brennan, president and executive director of the public finance department of Roosevelt & Cross, for the private sector.
Along with Weldon and Brennan, whose awards were presented by Freda Johnson, 12 other honorees from the public and private sectors were recognized as Trailblazing Women in Public Finance by the Northeast Women in Public Finance at the Dec. 2 event.
The 2025 public-sector Trailblazers:
Lisa Eisenberg, State of Ohio
Laura Farmer, Virginia Department of Transportation
Meghan Gutekunst, University of California office of the president
Jill Jaworski, City of Chicago
Sherien N. Khella, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Sanna Wong-Chen, New York City Office of Management and Budget
The 2025 private-sector Trailblazers:
Julie Burger, Wells Fargo
Pepe Finn, Stern Brothers & Co
Kelly Hutchinson, Katten
Cathy Krawitz, Northwestern Mutual
Linda Vanderperre, Kroll Bond Rating Agency
Nora Wittstruck, S&P Global Ratings
The other nine finalists for the 2025 Deal of the Year:
NORTHEAST REGION The Northeast Region winner is the New York Energy Finance Development Corporation's $944.15 million energy supply revenue bonds, which prepaid 30 years of electricity for the New York Power Authority in what was the first tax-exempt prepaid electricity transaction in New York. The deal created a new statewide conduit credit and provided a repeatable platform to integrate renewables in support of New York's climate goals.
SOUTHEAST REGION The winner in the Southeast Region is the Virginia Port Authority for its first port revenue bond issue since 2016. This $248.7 million financing enabled a first-of-its-kind lease amendment at Virginia International Gateway, which secured a fixed-price option to purchase the terminal in 2065, funded a $335 million upfront rent payment and defeased all outstanding port revenue bonds and equipment leases while avoiding an 8% ticking fee.
FAR WEST REGION The Far West Region winner is the Alaska Railroad Corporation's $112 million issuance of cruise port revenue bonds, which financed a new terminal and dock at the Port of Seward using a novel risk-transfer approach — purchasing the project with bond proceeds only after substantial completion, backed by ARRC equity and a pier usage agreement with minimum passenger guarantees.
INNOVATIVE FINANCING The state of Wisconsin's $454.3 million general obligation refunding is the Innovative Financing award winner for pioneering the municipal market's first fixed-spread tender for tax-exempt bonds. By replacing the traditional fixed-price approach, Wisconsin reduced exposure to interest-rate volatility for both issuer and bondholders and established a repeatable model for liability management that many issuers can adopt to unlock economic savings while broadening investor engagement.
PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP FINANCING The winner in the Public-Private Partnership category is the Georgia SR 400 Express Lanes Project, which combined a record issuance of tax-exempt private-activity bonds, the largest TIFIA loan to date, and a 50-year concession that delivered a $3.8 billion upfront concession fee to the state while funding 16 miles of dynamically tolled lanes and future bus rapid transit improvements — harnessing private capital to accelerate delivery, reduce public cost and improve mobility and safety across metro Atlanta.
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The transaction, which supports the Navajo community in Ganado, Arizona, represents a major landmark in furthering Native American health care infrastructure, overcoming hurdles tribal governments typically face in issuing municipal debt to open a replicable path to market other indigenous health systems can follow.
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