Grant Street Group today announced that the Comptroller of Public Accounts for the State of Texas, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, selected Grant Street to create and maintain a new website that the Comptroller will use to auction $7 billion of tax and revenue anticipation notes (TRANs) in August and annually thereafter.
The Comptroller's "private label site" (PLS) called TranTexas.com will allow the State to receive competitive bids from qualified underwriters based in Texas as well as from around the country. Also, using an electronic bidding innovation offered only by Grant Street Group, the PLS will allow qualified minority firms -- or HUBs (Historically Underutilized Businesses) -- to place bids and receive awards on portions of the notes. This partial bidding feature allows smaller, less well-capitalized underwriters to effectively compete with their much larger and more heavily capitalized competitors by enabling them to bid for part, but not all of the notes for sale.
Texas now joins Colorado, Massachusetts, and New Mexico in using a Grant Street private label site to host their competitive TRAN sales. These states, as well as many others, accept partial bids in order to allow more underwriters - including local and regional underwriters in their states - to compete for the State's notes and hence, achieve more competitive rates.