News
The City of New York Announces Successful Sale of $1.56 Billion of General Obligation Bonds and Strong Results from Tender Offer
Transaction achieves $108 million in debt service savings for the City
The City of New York (“the City”) announced the successful sale of approximately $1.56 billion of General Obligation Bonds, comprised of $1.41 billion of tax-exempt fixed rate bonds and $151 million of taxable fixed rate bonds. Proceeds of the bond sale will be used to refinance outstanding bonds for savings. The transaction achieves over $108 million in total debt service savings, spread primarily across Fiscal Years 2024 through 2027.
The tax-exempt portion of the transaction generated significant investor demand with nearly $2.2 billion of orders during the retail order period, the highest in recent history, and over $6.4 billion of priority orders during the institutional order period. In total, the City received orders representing approximately 6.1x the amount of tax-exempt bonds offered for sale.
Due to the strong demand, yields on the tax-exempt bonds were reduced relative to the start of the institutional order period by 7 basis points in 2025 through 2033, 10 basis points in 2034, and 12 basis points in 2035 through 2039. Final yields ranged from 3.12% to 3.64%.
Additionally, during the order period for the taxable bonds, the City received indications of interest of approximately $274 million or 1.8x the amount of taxable bonds offered for sale.
Given the demand for the taxable bonds, the final spread for the bonds maturing in 2025 was reduced by 7 basis points. Final yields were 5.13% in 2024 and 4.81% in 2025.
The bonds were underwritten through a syndicate led by joint senior managers Jefferies and Siebert Williams Shank.
To achieve additional savings, the City also conducted a tender process to purchase back certain outstanding bonds from bondholders. The City received nearly 1,200 offers from bondholders during the tender process for a total of roughly $454 million, or 40% of the outstanding principal of the relevant bonds. This level of bondholder participation makes the City’s tender one of the most successful tender solicitations to-date in the municipal bond market.
The City will purchase $353 million of the bonds offered – about 78% of the total amount offered for tender. The tender process generated approximately $26 million of total debt service savings, or 24% of the total savings achieved by the overall transaction. Jefferies and Siebert Williams Shank served as Dealer-Mangers for the tender transaction.
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