Missouri

CHICAGO - The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District will exhaust its remaining borrowing authority next month when it competitively bids $52 million of revenue bonds, but the agency hopes to return to the market by spring if voters grant $945 million in new bond authority.

The Kansas City Council last week asked a Jackson County Circuit Court judge to support its bid to block Clay Chastain’s $2.5 billion light-rail ballot initiative.

CHICAGO - The Securities and Exchange Commission is among the list of regulators now probing the failed Mamtek US Inc. artificial sweetener factory in Moberly, Mo., that received local and state financing support, including recovery zone facility bonds backed by an appropriation pledge from the city that it refused to honor last month.

CHICAGO - Moberly, Mo., lost its investment-grade rating last week after it declined to make good on its appropriation pledge on $39 million of revenue bonds issued for a Chinese company's troubled artificial sweetener factory.

CHICAGO - A union between St. Louis-based Ascension Health and Arlington Heights, Ill.-based Alexian Brothers Health System advanced Thursday with the announcement that the two had signed a definitive agreement for Alexian's acquisition by the nation's largest nonprofit health care system.

CHICAGO - With its triple-A general obligation ratings intact, Missouri will take competitive bids next week on $146 million of special obligation refunding bonds to generate present-value savings and to complete a restructuring aimed at providing budgetary relief in fiscal 2012 and 2013.

CHICAGO — Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has formally called for a special session of the General Assembly beginning on Sept. 6 and set an agenda that calls for passage of measures to promote job creation and tax-credit reforms.

Moody's Investors Service put Western Missouri Medical Center's MIG-1 rating on $46.6 million of notes on negative watch for a possible downgrade due to a change in how the rating agency analyzes support under the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development loan program.

Stifel Financial last week announced preliminary plans to purchase its current headquarters in downtown St. Louis and seek some public funds to support it.

The Missouri House’s Budget Committee chairman last week proposed that the state dip into its reserves to pay for recovery efforts from recent weather-related disasters, according to published reports.

CHICAGO - Federal authorities announced the filing in court late last week of a $4.7 billion settlement agreement in their lawsuit against the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District.

Kansas City Mayor Sly James last week announced the creation of a blue-ribbon Commission on Municipal Revenue.

CHICAGO - The trustee on $113 million of bonds that financed construction of privately owned Branson Airport drew on supplemental reserves to make a July 1 debt service payment as the operators work to bolster business and stave off future enforcement actions by bondholders.

Moody's Investors Service has revised its outlook on Saint Luke's Health System's A1 rating to stable from negative due to its improved operating performance. The action affects $532 million of debt issued through the Missouri Health and Educational Facilities Authority.

Former Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser, who lost his bid for a second term, has taken a job as director of the Washington, D.C., think tank Governing Institute.

St. Louis-based Webster University received one-notch rating upgrades ahead of its recent new-money and refunding sale for $61 million.

St. Louis saw strong demand among institutional buyers for its $30 million refunding last week of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport revenue bonds and achieved 4.6% in net present-value savings, city Comptroller Darlene Green said.

CHICAGO - The University of Missouri Board of Curators will enter the market next week with $60 million of refunding system facilities revenue bonds as itgrapples with a steeper-than-expected cut in state aid made by Gov. Jay Nixon earlier this month.

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing $19 million of tax-increment refunding revenue bonds that were issued by Missouri's Florissant Industrial Development Authority in 2003.

CHICAGO — Washington University in St. Louis will enter the market Thursday with nearly $200 million of new-money and refunding revenue bonds that will help finance projects and introduce taxable bonds into the top-rated school's debt portfolio.