Record Junk Sale Funds Fertilizer After Texas Blast: Muni Credit
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An Iowa agency is set to offer the largest-ever U.S. municipal junk bond sale to finance a fertilizer plant two weeks after an explosion at a Texas distributor of crop nutrients killed 14 people.
The Iowa Finance Authority plans to issue $1.2 billion in tax-exempt debt this week to fund the building of a 320-acre nitrogen fertilizer plant by Orascom Construction Industries, Egypt’s biggest publicly traded company. Bond documents cite the hazards of ammonia, which may have contributed to the Texas blast, while saying that the facility won’t make solid ammonium nitrate, the most explosive type of nitrogen fertilizer.