Missouri

CHICAGO — The bondholder-owned St. Louis convention center hotel complex is back on the selling block with consultants lining up potential bidders in hopes of closing on a deal next year, the bond trustee reported in an investor notice.

CHICAGO — The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District got mixed signals from rating agencies this week, winning an upgrade to AAA from Standard & Poor's while losing its top mark from Fitch Ratings ahead of a $53 million revenue bond sale next week.

CHICAGO — Six months after a devastating tornado destroyed its competitor's facility, Freeman Health System in Joplin, Mo., will come to market next week with $25 million of bonds, primarily to fund additional beds needed to meet a surge in demand for its services.

Voters in Jackson and Clay counties last week easily approved a one-eighth cent sales tax to raise new revenue for the 100-year-old Kansas City Zoo.

CHICAGO - The trustee for $39 million of appropriation-backed bonds sold by a Moberly, Missouri, to help finance an artificial sweetener factory has filed a federal lawsuit against the Chinese company that abandoned the half-built project and defaulted on its city payments to cover debt service.

CHICAGO - Moberly, Mo., on Tuesday informed the trustee of $39 million of annual appropriation-backed revenue bonds that it won't honor its pledge to repay the debt issued to help finance construction of a half-built artificial sweetener plant abandoned by a Chinese company.

Missouri, a strong but rare issuer, will take competitive bids Wednesday on a $23.4 million refunding of appropriation-backed debt sold through a conduit to cover the state’s share of the University of Missouri-Columbia basketball arena that opened in 2004.

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.