New York issuers’ big deals regularly joust on bond calendar
On Oct. 9, 2025, investors had the chance to buy $1.5 billion of New York City general obligation bonds. If they didn’t buy those bonds, they had another opportunity — the very next week, when the city priced $1.88 billion of GOs.
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A week after that, the city offered investors another $1.5 billion of bonds through its Transitional Finance Authority.
Mega-deals from New York City and state are becoming more common, and growing in size. New York issuers priced 26 deals greater than $800 million last year. Some analysts say the frequency, timing and volume of mega-deals from New York are hurting its spreads.
The high volume and frequency of deals from New York state and city is a necessity, their officials say, even if it’s not the best-case scenario for spreads from the issuers’ standpoint.
The issuers argue they’ve found methods to manage the busy schedule.
New York issuers have priced 115 deals greater than $800 million since 2021. Those deals came from just 13 issuers. More than half of the deals were issued by New York City, the New York City Transitional Finance Authority, or the New York City Municipal Water Finance Authority.
New York mega-deals were priced a median of 13.5 days apart. In 2026, its deals have priced a median of eight days apart. On six occasions in the last six years, New York issuers priced two mega-deals on the same day.
Many buyers are “very overallocated” in New York’s big issuers, NewSquare Capital portfolio manager Kim Olsan said.
“When the large deals come, you typically see a fair amount of bid wanteds come through, because people are clearing out older positions and making room for new issues,” she said, adding that California’s GO credit has a similar problem.
New York’s volume of mega-deals is somewhat unusual, according to Olsan. Normally, billion-dollar deals are brought often by issuers who come to market once a year or less often, she said.
Spreads for mega-deals from airports or health systems are often “much tighter than you would otherwise expect,” Olsan said; “it would be quite rare for a particular holder to be overallocated in one health system.”
New York’s issuance is also “lumpy” compared to other states, said Pat Luby, head of municipals and senior market municipal strategist for CreditSights.
“Texas has big, billion-dollar deals, but then there’s hundreds of other deals,” Luby said, from the state’s school districts and municipalities. In New York, “the volume is concentrated in the issuers that are in the market on a regular basis, and they’re in the market for big size.”
Olsan said the city’s spreads often widen later in the year, as the volume builds up. Howard Cure, director of muni bond research at Evercore Wealth Management, said the deals being priced so closely together also damages spreads.
“It takes time for the market to absorb” mega-deals, Cure said, given the volume. “There’s only so much of the paper that investors can absorb.”
Jay Olson, New York City’s deputy comptroller for public finance, said he’s unaware of a pattern of spreads worsening throughout the year.
New York State Department of Budget Communications Director Tim Ruffinen said demand for state bonds has been extremely strong.
“We have found that demand is mostly impacted by volatile markets and less by the supply side,” Ruffinen wrote. “The state, as a frequent issuer, does not try to time the market.”
Spreads for New York City’s ten-year GOs have widened by around ten basis points recently, Cure said, although that could also be attributed to the city’s
“I’m honestly surprised by the strength of in-state demand for the paper,” Luby said, given its recent volume. “Even when deals have come at a discount to where the market had been, it still suggests to me that there’s a fair amount of demand from investors for in-state couplings on paper.”
Robert Rodriguez, president of the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York, said DASNY’s deal sizes have increased over time, but demand has remained strong, and “the market has been able to digest these large deals very, very well.”
Investors’ demand will likely be tested further, though, because volume from the state and city is projected to increase.
The timing for New York’s mega-deals is very logical. Financial information is released at certain times of the year, and issuers avoid pricing around those periods because the information could change the information in disclosure documents.
“[When] financial statement releases come out, you don’t want that bisecting the process,” Olson said. “There are a lot of issues unique to both [the city and state] that might crowd both entities into potentially the same tight time space. And then it’s just a matter of trying to talk to each other, to the extent to which we could avoid being completely on top of each other.”
The city tries to avoid issuing in mid-January or early February, because of the release of the mayor’s financial plan; in mid-April, which has the charter date for the executive budget; in June, because of the charter deadline for adopting a budget; and around the city annual comprehensive financial report release on Halloween and the first quarter budget modification in November.
The city’s back-to-back bond issuances also have a logic, Olson said; those are often taxable and tax-exempt deals.
“You can generally use the same bond disclosure, and you’re not overburdening the market because the taxable investor base is a distinct group, generally, relative to the tax-exempt base,” Olson said.
This strategy originated from the
“There may be some slight economies of scale. I can’t swear to it, but it is nice to be able to get a lot more done within a more confined space,” Olson said. “It’s not necessarily half the work, but I’m not going to say it’s exactly double.”
The city is aware that its debt is, on some level, competing with the state’s debt, but “it’s not necessarily easily within our control. We have our needs, and the state has their needs,” Olson said.
“There’s just no two ways around that,” he said.
“Market factors are more impactful on spreads than frequent issuances, but the State and NYC are targeting the same investors and try to coordinate issuances to avoid selling bonds in the same week,” Ruffinen wrote. “Accordingly, a successful pricing by NYC or the [Metropolitan Transportation Authority] is going to help the state’s sales and vice versa, so the state and other NY issuers are incented to work together.”
MTA Chief Financial Officer Jai Patel said the MTA “strives to diversify bond offerings across credits and coordinates with other large New York state issuers on when to go to market to avoid having too much New York paper on offer at the same time.”
Issuers within the city and state have employed some strategies to manage the massive volume.
DASNY issues its state debt on a fairly regular calendar, Rodriguez said, to make things predictable for both investors and other issuers. It sells personal income tax and sales tax revenue bonds for the state government.
Unlike the city, DASNY does sometimes try to time the market and will modify deal structure to increase demand.
DASNY tries to prepare its preliminary offering statement and ratings early, so it can accelerate a deal if market conditions are favorable, Rodriguez said.
The state Department of Budget will shift maturities to maximize pockets of demand in negotiated deals, according to Ruffinen. In competitive deals, the state will offer multiple series to allow different banks to choose different maturities.
The state has also been able to decrease its volume recently, as the budget allocated $17.8 billion for pay-as-you-go spending.
It’s “really, really hard to tell” whether the market is getting overburdened, Olson said.
“I’m not going to be flip about it and say there’s no problem here,” Olson said. “Maybe I’m just a bit of a pessimist or heavy doubter, but I just can’t take for granted that we’re going to be able to hit our marks because I’ve lived through times where we have.”
If New York’s volume leads to worse spreads, Olson said, the amount of capital need in the city and state means there’s not much issuers can do.
“At what rate does fixing the Brooklyn Bridge not pencil out?” Olson asked.
