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The St. Louis area is home to all four Missouri firms on Fortune Magazine’s 100 Fastest-Growing Companies list for 2010.

Chemical and ammunition maker Olin Corp. (NYSE: OLN) came in at No. 40 after not having made last year’s list.

Brokerage and banking firm Stifel Financial Corp. (NYSE: SF) came in at No. 65, having ranked 25^th last year.

Food company Ralcorp Holdings (NYSE: RAH) was 75^th for the second year in a row.

And restaurant operator and franchisor Panera Bread (Nasdaq: PNRA) was No instant payday loan. 99 on this year’s list but hadn’t been listed last year.

Topping Fortune’s 2010 list as the fastest-growing company was mining company Eldorado Gold of Vancouver, Canada, with three-year annualized EPS growth of 119 percent.

Fortune compiled the list based on a firm's revenue and profit growth, as well as annualized total return for the three-year period ended June 30. The list will appear in the magazine’s Sept. 6 issue.

For the full list, go here.

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Extending the light rail through Central Mesa is a step closer now that the Federal Transit Administration has approved Metro light rail’s request to enter the project development phase.

This means that Metro can start the engineering process of the 3.1-mile extension that runs along Main Street from the current end-of-line at Sycamore on the west side of town through downtown Mesa and on to Mesa Drive.

This is the first step in receiving $75 million from the federal government. The engineering contract is for $12.5 million and has been awarded to Jacobs Engineering, headquartered in Pasadena, Calif.

Preliminary and final engineering will take about two years and the Central Mesa extension is scheduled to be completed in 2016.

“Central Mesa is a solid project,” said Steve Banta, Metro CEO, in a news release. “While the FTA process is competitive, our project received a favorable rating and should fare well in its application for federal grant money.”

The total project cost is estimated at $200 million and will be paid for using a mix of regional and federal funds. The regional funding sources were approved by the voters in 2004 as part of Proposition 400, according to John Farry, spokesperson for Metro.

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HFF Inc. today posted a second quarter profit of $2.7 million, or 14 cents per share, compared with a loss of $200,000, or 1 cent per share, in the comparable year-ago quarter.

For the quarter ended June 30, the Downtown Pittsburgh-based commercial mortgage broker (NYSE:HF) had revenue of $34.1 million, more than double the revenue of $16.4 million it posted a year ago.

For the first six months of the year, HFF had net income of $2.6 million, or 14 cents per share, on revenue of $53.5 million. That compares with a loss of $2.2 million, or 14 cents per share, on revenue of $29.7 million in the first six months of 2009.

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Solutia Inc. said its second-quarter profit more than tripled from last year’s period, as sales rose more than 26 percent.

For the quarter ended June 30, the company reported net income of $41 million compared to net income of $10 million in last year’s quarter, primarily due to increased sales volumes across all segments, partially offset by higher raw material costs and higher interest expense.

Solutia’s net sales in the recent quarter were $518 million compared to $410 million in the quarter ended June 30, 2009.

During the recent quarter, Solutia bought Novomatrix a Singapore-based maker of window films for the automotive and architectural markets, for $73 million. Solutia also bought the Vista solar product business (now called Vistasolar) from German firm Etimex Holding for $294 million.

The company had said in April that it will stop making a key ingredient for a rubber compound used in making tires, called primary accelerators, in the second half of this year Internet Payday loans. Solutia said Monday that it took a $38 million charge in the second quarter for restructuring costs related to closing that business.

Solutia said it expects steady second-half sales volume with a normal fourth-quarter seasonal slowdown. The company said it expects average selling prices in the second half of the year to be consistent with the second quarter, and full-year revenue growth of from 10 percent to 15 percent versus last year.

St. Louis-based Solutia Inc. (NYSE: SOA), led by Chairman, President and Chief Executive Jeffry Quinn, develops specialty chemicals, fibers, fluids and other performance products.

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Accounting and business consulting company LECG Corp. officially closed its first acquisition since merging with Smart Business Advisory & Consulting and relocating from California to the Philadelphia area earlier this year.

LECG agreed to buy Bourne Business Consulting, a 36-person consulting firm in London, on June 22 and the deal closed officially on Monday.

LECG (NASDAQ:XPRT) didn’t say what it plans to pay in the deal. But in a release Monday, the investment banking firm that assisted Bourne with the transaction, Equiteq, said the deal includes “an initial consideration of 2.75 million British pounds plus contingent consideration over the next four years.”

Picking up Bourne will give LECG more clout in the valuation, transfer pricing, intellectual property and tax consulting areas in Europe. Danny Ryan is LECG’s managing director in London.

Bourne was started in 2002 and has offices in London and Farnham in Surrey. It is led by four partners: Philip Feibusch, Colette Moscati, Ian Mackie and Toni Dyson.

LECG has 39 offices around the world and Devon, Pa.-based Steve Samek serves as CEO. LECG and Smart completed a merger in March and chose to operate under the LECG name but locate its headquarters and take its CEO from Smart. Samek said earlier this spring that he expected 50 jobs to transfer from LECG’s Emeryville, Calif., offices to Smart’s Devon, Pa., location and held a job fair to hire candidates.

With the headquarters transition, the combined firm has already named two new senior managers to handle chief financial officer and general counsel duties. Steve Fife, LECG’s CFO, and Deanne Tully, LECG’s general counsel, will resign from their roles this summer and will not make the move to the East Coast. Fife will be replaced on Aug payday loans. 15 by Warren D. Barratt and Tully stepped down June 30 in favor of Yuri Rozenfeld.

“Having the management team centralized in one location is an important part of our strategy to drive operational excellence, effectively manage costs, and provide support for our professionals,” Samek said. “With more than two-thirds of our clients located in Europe or on the East Coast of the U.S., we cannot underestimate the value of having our leadership close to our engagements and the professionals who serve them.”

Barratt has more than 27 years of financial, accounting and general management experience. In addition to 11 years in public accounting with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, he has served as CFO for a variety of public and private companies in the services, technology and life sciences industries. Most recently, he was senior vice president and CFO of Epitome Systems, a privately held business process software company. Prior to that, he was CFO of Oncura, a multinational medical device joint venture.

Rozenfeld joined LECG June 1 and brings nearly 15 years of legal experience, most recently as senior securities counsel at Walgreens. Previously, he was general counsel and secretary at I-trax.

LECG also recently said it promoted two managing directors who joined the firm earlier this year from Huron Consulting to the positions of regional managing partners in the firm’s litigation, forensics and finance practice. Joe Decilveo, who joined the firm earlier this year from Huron Consulting, has responsibilities on the east coast while Stan Logan oversees the firm’s Midwest region and operations in Asia-Pacific, including the firm’s new Shanghai office.

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The Federal Reserve is ordering Peoples Bank and Trust Co. to add capital and sort out its troubled commercial real estate loans.

In a written agreement with the bank, revealed Monday, the Fed also told the bank not to pay dividends without Fed permission or interest on its trust preferred securities, a form of long-term debt that allows temporary lapses in interest payments.

Peoples Bank and Trust is based in Troy, Mo., and has seven branches in Lincoln, St. Charles and Pike counties. It has $415 million in assets and lost $2.3 million in the first three months of the year. It holds less than half of one percent of the St. Louis region’s bank deposits. Peoples deposits are protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

In the March quarter, the bank dropped slightly below the level that regulators consider "well capitalized," a red flag in banking. The bank still meets the "adequately capitalized" standard.

Peoples Bank ran into problems with commercial real estate lending. About 4 percent of all the bank’s loans were "non-performing," generally meaning that payments are far past due.

A written agreement with the Fed is considered a serious enforcement action indicating problems at the bank. The Fed told the bank to reduce concentrations in commercial real estate lending and write off loans that federal bank examiners believe can’t be rescued.

"The economic conditions have caused a challenge for many and we are no exception," the bank said in a written statement. "Loan defaults and past due loans have mounted and the bank is moving forward to meet those challenges. The bank believes that it is well on its way to correcting regulatory concerns and returning to its usual profitable position."

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Loose internal controls and a reliance on real estate development loans sunk The Buckhead Community Bank, the lender in Atlanta’s tony enclave founded by Aaron’s Inc. founder Charlie Loudermilk, according to a post-mortem of the bank’s collapse.

Buckhead Community, famously founded by Loudermilk, an Atlanta business legend, after a poor customer service experience at another bank, bet heavily on residential and commercial development loans in metro Atlanta.

The failure of the $896 million-in-assets Buckhead Community cost the government's deposit insurance fund $240 million.

Like many other Georgia banks, the sweet profits found in lending to developers soured with the fallout of the real estate market, and Buckhead Community burned through its capital as losses mounted, according to a report Friday by the Office of the Inspector General of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

“(The bank) failed because the bank’s Board and management did not implement adequate controls to identify, measure, monitor, and control the risks associated with the bank’s significant (land acquisition and development loan) concentration,” the report stated. “Further, Buckhead relied on potentially volatile non-core liabilities such as higher-priced certificates of deposit, including brokered deposits, to fund loan growth.”

It’s a familiar story in Georgia, a state which leads the nation in bank failures with 38 since 2008, including eight this year.

Buckhead Community failed Dec. 4, 2009, along with two other banks. It and First Security National Bank were bundled and sold to State Bank & Trust Co. in a deal assisted by the FDIC.

Buckhead Community was founded in 1998 with $34 million in assets by investors, including Loudermilk, and featured some of the city’s business elite on its board, including and real estate developers David Allman, owner of Regent Partners LLC, and Julian LeCraw.

The bank tripled in size every three years from 1998 to 2007, propelled in part by an ultimately crippling decision in 2007 to acquire Allied Bancshares Inc., the parent company of First National Bank of Forsyth County.

In a December 2008 interview with Atlanta Business Chronicle, Loudermilk, Buckhead Community’s chairman, said he regretted the decision to acquire Allied at the height of the market.

The purchase contributed to soaring loan losses at the bank, with eight branches across the north metro.

“We wouldn’t buy that group again,” he said at the time. “It was a good thing at the time, but if we were presented with it today we’d pass.”

First National was also besieged by real estate loan problems when Buckhead Community acquired it for $53.8 million in stock and cash, capital that could have been used to protect against real estate losses.

Buckhead Community lost $59.8 million through the first three quarters of 2009, following a $35.8 million loss in 2008.

The bank was bullish with its loan growth from 2004 to 2007, ignoring declines in the housing market, the FDIC said.

“Weaknesses in the bank’s loan underwriting and credit administration practices, exacerbated by the precipitous economic decline in the Atlanta metropolitan real estate market that began in 2007, led to ADC loan losses that eroded the bank’s earnings and capital,” the Inspector General’s report said.

In 2008, Buckhead Community had nearly five times its total capital in real estate loans.

Soured loans began to mount in the second half of 2008. Problem loans—those delinquent, in default or in foreclosure—climbed to 9.8 percent in third quarter 2008 and more than tripled to 28.66 percent by the end of the first quarter of this year.

By the third quarter, 36.98 percent of its $648 million loan portfolio was in some form of trouble. A total of $173 million in loans were listed as non-accrual or foreclosed.

In December 2008, the held $277.7 million in wholesale deposits, volatile funding sources when a bank encounters trouble because the deposits are not from local core customers.

In its 2009 annual report, Buckhead Community’s auditors said they had doubts about the bank's ability to survive, and the bank was also subject to regulatory enforcement orders requiring the bank to raise capital and improve its balance sheet.

By January 2008, regulators reached an informal memorandum of understanding to correct problems. More restrictive enforcement action followed in August 2009, when the FDIC slapped the bank with a cease and desist order, directing the bank to make changes to its operations.

Bank insiders tried to save the bank, pursuing options to raise capital. It issued $10 million in subordinated notes in March 2008, and submitted an application in October 2008 for funding under the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. That application was withdrawn several months later.

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BP sought to reassure both the general public and investors Friday, saying it has the money to spend whatever it takes to clean up the Gulf oil spill.

"Our first call on dollars is to ensure we do everything we can to get the Gulf Coast back to normal," BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said on a conference call with investors. "But that still leaves us with plenty of dollars to spend on other things."

An executive on the call noted BP (BP) generated $30 billion in cash flow over the last four quarters.

The spill has so far cost BP just over $1 billion. Estimates as to how much it will ultimately cost range from $3 billion to $40 billion, although that amount would likely be paid out over a number of years.

Hayward said the amount the company is spending per day in the Gulf could be "diminished dramatically" if the cap they put over the well Thursday is successful in channeling most oil to the surface. The success of that cap should be known in the next 24 hours.

He also sought to reassure investors that the company will not only pay its current commitments, but still has enough money to invest in its core business - finding and selling new oil.

To that end, he said the firm is creating a separate organization to deal with the oil spill, so the rest of the company is not distracted.

Hayward expects deep water drilling and oil production to ultimately resume in the Gulf, albeit under stricter safety standards.

President Obama has issued a six month halt to new deepwater drilling pending an investigation into the accident April 20 that claimed 11 lives and a more thorough review of drilling safety and procedures in general.

Some have called on BP to suspend its dividend in the wake of the spill, saying the money should be set aside for clean-up costs and damages rather than returned to investors. Last year, the company returned more than $10 billion to shareholders.

But BP executives said the company has a commitment to not only the Gulf of Mexico and its residents, but to the company’s 80,000 employees, the hundreds of thousands of people that invest in the firm, and the millions who receive the dividend as part of pension plans.

"BP faces this situation as strong company," said Hayward. "We will stand behind all our commitments."

Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP’s chairman, said decisions on the size of the dividend will be made "how they’ve always been," which is based on the financial health of the company at the time. He said final decision on the dividend will be made in late July.

There have also been proposals by U.S. lawmakers to force BP to stop paying the dividend. Svanberg said those proposals are "something we’ll have to follow."

Earlier this week, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said paying a dividend before the ultimate cost of the disaster has been tallied would be "unfathomable." 

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RehabCare Group Inc. said Kevin Gross, senior vice president of hospital operations, plans to resign effective June 4.

Gross has accepted the position of president of the Oklahoma division of Ardent Health Services, a role he held prior to his tenures at Universal Health Services and RehabCare.

He has led RehabCare’s hospital division since July 2008.

Brock Hardaway, president and chief operating officer of Triumph HealthCare, which RehabCare recently bought for $570 million, has been promoted to RehabCare executive vice president, assuming leadership of the hospital division and reporting directly to RehabCare President and Chief Executive John Short.

Hardaway joined Triumph in 2005 and was appointed to manage the combined company’s long-term acute care hospital portfolio following RehabCare’s acquisition of Triumph in November 2009. He will oversee division operations from Triumph headquarters in Houston.

St. Louis-based RehabCare (NYSE: RHB) is the fourth-largest, post-acute hospital operator and the third-largest, long-term acute care hospital provider in the nation, with 28 long-term acute care hospitals and six inpatient rehabilitation facilities in 13 states. The company has more than 18,000 employees and reported $869.4 million in 2009 operating revenue.

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Shares of Houston’s Cornell Cos. Inc. gained more than one third of their value in pre-market trading Monday morning after GEO Group Inc. announced it will buy the rival correctional facility operator for about $685 million in cash and stock.

The purchase price includes about $300 million in Cornell debt assumption.

The combined company will manage and/or own 97 correctional and detention facilities with a total design capacity of approximately 76,000 beds and 32 behavioral health facilities with a total design capacity of approximately 5,000 beds.

The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.

Boca Raton, Fla.-based GEO’s (NYSE: GEO) expects its purchase of Cornell Cos. (NYSE: CRN) to increase its total annual revenues by approximately $400 million to more than $1.5 billion.

In pre-market trading Cornell Cos.’ Stock was up nearly 37 percent to a new 52-week-high of $25.29.

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