Grant Street Group Launches New Service
January 14, 2002School District of Pittsburgh First Client
Pittsburgh, PA (January 14, 2002) — In November and December 2001, Grant Street Group (formerly MuniAuction), the Pittsburgh based Internet auction house for fixed-income securities, used its new money market investment platform to solicit $13.5 million of CDs from Pittsburgh area banks. Traditionally, school districts and other municipal entities solicit bids from banks via phone and then simply deposit their funds with the institution offering the highest rate for a given period of time. Using YieldAuction, municipalities are able to solicit bids from a much larger number of banks via the Internet and conduct an auction in which the banks bid against each other. The municipality then gets the benefit of a higher investment rate from the combination of increased competition and the auction format. In the two Pittsburgh School District auctions, the following local banks submitted bids: ESB Bank, National City Bank, PNC Bank and Allegheny Valley Bank. Chris Berdnik, Director of Finance for the School District of Pittsburgh, said, “This new process greatly enhances our chances of getting the most favorable interest rates on our investments. I was also pleased to see that many of our Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group partner banks are participating in the bidding process.”
David Hasenkopf, Director of Sales and Marketing for Grant Street Group, said, “We are delighted to be working with the School District of Pittsburgh. In addition to serving local municipal entities, Grant Street Group has begun to market YieldAuction nationally beginning with a contract with a North East-based money center bank.”