BATON ROUGE, LA - An online auction was held today at a special meeting of the State Bond Commission for the sale of $400 million in State General Obligation (GO) bonds and the refinancing of $49 million of existing bonds, saving taxpayers $5.2 million, according to State Treasurer John Kennedy.

 

"We saved a ton of taxpayer money today," said Treasurer Kennedy. "We did it by delaying the general obligation bond issues as long as we could and aggressively refinancing our outstanding debt to take advantage of historically low interest rates."

 

The State Bond Commission's online auction pitted investors from across the globe against each other for the two bond sales held today. The winning bids were as follows:

 

Auction 1: $400 million in State of Louisiana General Obligation Bonds, Series 2012-A were awarded to J.P. Morgan Securities LLC with an interest rate of 2.715368%.

 

Auction 2: $49 million in State of Louisiana General Obligation Refunding Bonds, Series 2012-B were awarded to Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc. with an interest rate of 0.419783% and will save the state $5.191 million.

 

The $400 million in General Obligation Bonds will fund 190 projects across the state.