Illinois

Illinois plans to return to the market next month with a $1.3 billion general obligation refunding that would be followed by a $480 million new money GO issue.

Chicago Public Schools’ fiscal gains this year are fading to the background as a potential teachers strike looms large and a new downgrade puts the district on the cusp of the triple-C category.

Changes in assumed investment return rates at four of Illinois’ five state employee pension funds, as well as other revised assumptions in areas like life expectancy, are raising pressure on the state to tackle pension reforms.

The Chicago Teachers Union is moving closer to a strike that would mark a setback in the junk-rated Chicago Public Schools’ efforts to stabilize its finances.

While Mayor Rahm Emanuel has chipped away at the pension problem, Chicago has come nowhere close to identifying a solution. The city must, at a bare minimum, contribute enough every year, including 2016, to ensure that the plans' funded ratio not drop below, and that their unfunded liabilities not exceed, 2015 levels.

Chicago-based veteran municipal analyst Peter Stettler has joined Piper Jaffray's strategic analytics team.

Illinois named 15 firms to the new senior manager underwriting pool it will use for negotiated bond sales over the next three years.

Chicago will bolster its police ranks as part of a broader plan aimed at reining in a skyrocketing homicide rate that some believe threatens to undercut the city’s recent fiscal progress.

The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy’s municipal finance center is offering grants for academic research projects on topics that range from public sector pensions and bond financing to infrastructure, taxation, and the politics of public finance.

Chicago’s proposed fix for its troubled municipal employees’ pension fund offers a better solution than a restructuring backed by the fund’s managers, say Chicago’s finance chiefs.

Chicago Public Schools closed on $325 million of short-term borrowing earlier this month and plans a $150 million draw next month from new credit lines to manage its precarious liquidity.

Northwestern Memorial Healthcare and University of Chicago Medical Center are planning deals totaling about $425 million following Illinois Finance Authority approval.

While the Chicago and Illinois credits both remain tainted by their pension and budget ills, their paths have diverged and Chicago is looking better, Nuveen Asset Management says in a new report.

The University of Illinois is preparing to refund $116 million while highlighting for investors what it describes as diverse revenues and growing enrollment that have lessened the strains of coping with the state’s budget mess.

The Chicago City Council signed off Wednesday on up to $3.5 billion of O’Hare International Airport borrowing and a new water/sewer tax to help rescue the city’s largest pension fund from looming insolvency.

Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic returns to the market Wednesday to take advantage of low interest rates to shed some of its floating-rate exposure.

Underwriters, advisors, and lawyers working on Chicago’s bond deals must come to City Council finance committee meetings prepared to take the “hot seat” and defend their firms’ ethnic, racial, and gender diversity.

The Chicago City Council will vote Wednesday on $3.5 billion of airport borrowing.

Restructuring the debt of Chicago and Illinois would entail about two years of unpleasant headlines, but the city and the state will rebound far sooner and less painfully than if they stay on their current paths.

Chicago's plan to rescue its largest pension fund with the help of a new water and sewer tax cleared a City Council committee despite complaints about the tax’s impact and concerns it doesn’t fully solve the fund’s crisis.