2015 Deal of the Year: Southeast Region

Who won this year's Deal of the Year award for the Southeast Region? The winner will be honored on Thursday, December 3 at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan, and later that night will compete with winners in the seven other categories for the right to be named The Bond Buyer's 2015 Deal of the Year.

VOICEOVER: In a state that ranked 46 in broadband availability, Kentucky's leaders said they could not afford to wait for private providers to bring high speed internet to all 120 of it's counties nor could the Bluegrass state rely solely on government funding. Governor Steve Beshear said, while announcing that a public private partnership would bring Kentucky into today's technology dependent economy with a $324 million fibre optic internet system. In August, the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority issued $232 million of 30 year bonds and loan the proceeds to the Macquarie led concession building the 3200 mile long middle mile system.

The states first availability payment base P3 received investment grade ratings of Baa2 from Moody's Investors Service and BBB-plus from Fitch ratings. The deal forged new territory in the P3 market as a unique first of it's kind approach to broadband connectivity on a statewide basis, and was the first non-transportation P3 to use a naval tax exempt governmental purpose bond structure that achieve full risk transfer. The bonds were also issued in a fixed rate structure with quarterly principle amateurisation to further reduce annual interest expense, another first for a P3 deal.