Bringing valuable experience as bond counsel, Steve Mitchell serves as a trusted advisor to banks and other financial institutions undertaking public finance and lending transactions. He provides clear, comprehensive counsel on nationally recognized financings in a variety of sectors, including education, transportation and health care.
Steve serves as bond counsel, issuer’s counsel, lender’s counsel, credit enhancer’s counsel or underwriter’s counsel in both tax-exempt and taxable financings, including general obligation, revenue and leasehold revenue bond issues. He has also led work on lease-purchase transactions and other financing mechanisms. Steve studies a bank’s internal requirements and policies and uses that knowledge to process financing documents exactly according to the institution’s protocols. This customized approach streamlines the process and cuts down on delays as a deal approaches closing.
Steve also assists corporate clients with financings and mergers and acquisitions, and has participated in numerous structured bank credit financings for health care and higher education institutions, in which blended experience in both public and commercial finance is especially useful.
He has extensive experience in matters related to nonprofit corporations and was one of the first attorneys to analyze Missouri’s nonprofit law after lawmakers made major changes in 1995. Steve has provided guidance on nonprofit issues that crop up with health care facilities, educational institutions, affordable housing developments and other public benefit organizations.
experience
Bond Buyer Deal of the Year
- Counsel to U.S. Bank in a 2011 transaction named the Bond Buyer’s Deal of the Year for the health care sector. The $1.75 billion credit facility restructuring and related $665 million bond restructuring for Adventist Health System/Sunbelt (AHS) involved 14 U.S. and foreign banks. The new credit facility provided credit enhancement and liquidity support on Adventist’s tax-exempt bond issues and allowed direct draws for general corporate purposes. Thompson Coburn served as counsel to U.S. Bank, which acted as the administrative agent and lead arranger on the transaction. The Bond Buyer recognized the deal for its complexity and size. It was one of the largest syndicated bank credit facilities ever created for a nonprofit health system, and one of the largest managed syndicated loan facilities in U.S. Bank’s history.
Creating new nonprofits
- Counseled a nonprofit corporation through its spinoff from a large pharmacy benefit manager into a separate 501(c)(3) organization. Now a nonprofit pharmacy that provides discount prescription drugs to qualified patients, the nonprofit is staffed with 60 licensed pharmacists and patient care advocates, and has served more than 210,000 patients in the US and U.S. territories since its founding in 2010.
- The Missouri Bar
- Illinois State Bar Association
- The Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis
- National Association of Bond Lawyers
- Council of Development Finance Agencies
- Listed in “The Best Lawyers in America®,” 2019-2025 (by BL Rankings); Lawyer of the Year for Public Finance Law, 2023
- Admitted as a Fellow, American College of Bond Counsel, 2021
- Listed in Missouri & Kansas Super Lawyers, 2012-2014 (by Thomson Reuters)
- Served as agent bank counsel in The Bond Buyer’s 2011 Healthcare Deal of the Year
When I’m not working, I enjoy spending time with my family. We are very involved in our church and enjoy traveling and bike riding.