It came in the form of tax credits, from a program never before used, to pay back some of the cost of the land McKee spent five years secretly buying in north St. Louis.

It was a good day for McKee, and for his hugely ambitious $8.1 billion NorthSide project.

It was also a good day for his bankers.

Because after McKee sold the tax credits for cash, he used the money not on NorthSide itself but to pay down his debt, mostly to the small Washington, Mo., bank that is his primary lender on the project.

Yet nearly half of the $19.6 million was reimbursement for interest and fees already paid to lenders. In a sense, the bank got some added protection and a quick payback.

This is exactly how the new tax credit program was intended to work, supporters say. The credits provided the backup a bank needed to see before accepting the risk of financing a long, complex process of assembling land in beleaguered north St. Louis neighborhoods.

"We’ve got to understand, these are high-risk loan areas," said Missouri Sen. John Griesheimer, who pushed the Distressed Areas Land Assemblage tax credit in the Capitol. "This is where bankers and developers don’t want to go."

But the way the program has worked so far speaks to the heart of a lawsuit against it to be heard this week in Cole County. The tax credits won’t create jobs, said attorney Irene Smith. They won’t build buildings or generate any other public good, at least not directly.

"You’re basically just incentivizing the collection of land," she said. "You’re not incentivizing any development."

When state lawmakers established the program in 2007, they designed it to encourage lending on a speculative project such as NorthSide, something risky that might take years to pan out. Indeed, many say it was written specifically for McKee.

Griesheimer, a Republican from Washington, Mo., chairs the Senate’s economic development committee and helped author the credit. Early on in that process, he said in a recent interview, the senator consulted with McKee and with L.B. Eckelkamp, a constituent of his and chief executive of McKee’s primary lender, the Bank of Washington.

They met, Griesheimer said, "to explain what they needed." And after talking with a few other experts, he inserted the tax credit program, worth $95 million, into a massive state economic development bill. It had the vocal support of Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley. And it passed.

The measure included a 100 percent reimbursement for money spent on interest and loan fees to buy at least 50 acres of land in low-income neighborhoods, and a 50 percent reimbursement for the cost of land itself. It was structured that way, Griesheimer said, to protect any banker willing to take a chance on a major project such as this. It was, he said, the only way NorthSide would happen.

"It was a very high-risk area," he said. "The banks and everybody wanted to make sure that they’re going to recoup at least some of their losses, some of their money."

Indeed, beyond a $27 million loan from the Bank of Washington, McKee has struggled to attract lenders, even with the support of the tax credits. He has pitched NorthSide to a number of local banks, but none has publicly committed to him.

The Bank of Washington’s money did not come cheap. Since 2005, McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration has paid at least $9.25 million in interest and fees on loans held by the bank, according to documents obtained from the Missouri Department of Economic Development under state open records laws. Another $529,000 in interest went to a small Illinois bank that’s now defunct. Now, every cent of that has been reimbursed by the state.

In a recent e-mail, McKee acknowledged that his interest costs were high. But so, he argued, was the risk.

"The loans were unique," McKee wrote. "They were the only loans made in decades for large-scale site development in north St. Louis that were not backed by government guarantees."

Once he sold the tax credits in January, McKee used the proceeds to pay a substantial portion of his debt. The bank "required a pay down," he wrote, and it makes sense for the project. Paying off debt will reduce interest payments — which were nearly $3.8 million last year — and free up cash for actual redevelopment.

But some say all this focus on protecting lenders reflects misplaced priorities.

"Half of the money is going to pay interest on loans," Smith said. "What public benefit do we gain from a tax credit being used to pay someone’s interest?"

That question will be up to a judge.

Smith said she planned to focus her case on the constitutionality of the tax credits, an issue, she says, that’s never been thoroughly vetted in court. It’s a fairly narrow legal question, Smith said, and she expects the trial, set for Wednesday, to be brief.

In the mean time, McKee continues to buy property in north St. Louis.

His tax credit application says he has spent $25.1 million on 98 acres across two square miles near downtown. It estimates another $66 million in land-buying costs to come. And there’s still about $75 million in the pot of money available through the Distressed Areas credit; McKee’s financial plans project his getting nearly all of it.

Even the program’s critics express little surprise in how it’s been used so far. In floor debate three years ago, Sen. Brad Lager, R-Savannah, raised questions about so much reimbursement for borrowing costs and whether the state should spend $95 million on this sort of project. But he lost that debate.

"And right, wrong, or indifferent, they’re using the credit exactly how it was written," Lager said recently. As for whether it will work, he said: "Only time will be the judge."

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Jeff Vinik, a Boston-based asset manager, avid hockey fan, and minority owner of the Boston Red Sox, controls the company.

Terms of the deal that closed Wednesday were not disclosed. The purchase also includes the lease to the St. Pete Times Forum and ownership of adjacent real estate, the club said in a release.

Vinik becomes the Chairman of the Lightning and the club’s Governor on the National Hockey League’s Board of Governors. Earlier Wednesday, the NHL Board of Governors approved the acquisition of the team unanimously. A purchase agreement to buy the team on Feb. 4, 2010

“The Lightning is a great franchise in a terrific community,” said Vinik in a prepared statement. “We thank [former owner] Oren Koules and his partners for beginning the turn-around of the Lightning hockey club. Our goal now is to build a world-class organization, on and off the ice.”

Vinik, 50, is the founder and chairman of Vinik Asset Management free credit score online. Prior to forming Vinik Asset Management, he managed Fidelity’s Magellan Fund, at that time the world’s largest equities mutual fund. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Duke University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering and Economics, Vinik went on to earn his Masters of Business Administration degree from the Harvard Business School.

The team has scheduled a press conference March 5 to discuss the sale.

The Lightning was founded in 1990 by NHL Hall of Famer Phil Esposito and began play in 1992. The team won the Stanley Cup in 2004. Previous owners of the Lightning include Kokusai Green Ltd (1992-1998), Art Williams (1998-99), Palace Sports & Entertainment (1999-2008) and Lightning Enterprises LP (2008-2010).

The team currently has 20 games remaining in the 2009-10 regular season and it sits in 11th position in Eastern Conference, just two points removed from a playoff position.

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Gross operating profits advanced 2.2 percent in the three months through December from the previous quarter, when they declined a revised 1.4 percent, the Bureau of Statistics said in Sydney today. The median estimate of 15 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a 3 percent gain.

Today’s report adds to evidence of an economic rebound that may prompt the central bank to raise the benchmark interest rate tomorrow for the fourth time in five meetings. Australia’s economy probably grew the most in 1 1/2 years in the fourth quarter, a separate analysts’ survey ahead of a report on March 3 shows, boosted by A$22 billion ($20 billion) in spending by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on roads, ports and schools.

Income from companies “looks OK, and they should improve further” in 2010, said Stephen Roberts, a senior economist at Normura Australia Ltd. in Sydney. “They’ve cut back a bit on costs and by this time next year we should have a big positive annual gain” in earnings.

Profits declined 11.2 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, today’s report showed.

The Australian dollar fell to 89.84 U.S. cents at 12:03 p.m. in Sydney from 89.89 cents just before the report was released. The two-year government bond yield dropped 1 basis point to 4.58 percent. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.

Supermarkets

Woolworths Ltd., Australia’s biggest retailer, said last week that first-half net income rose 11 percent to A$1.1 billion on increasing profitability at its supermarkets.

Goodman Fielder Ltd., the nation’s largest baker, said on Feb. 25 that first-half profit increased 25 percent after it cut manufacturing expenses and added new bread brands.

While some economists say concerns about sovereign debt in Europe and financial-markets turmoil may prompt central bank Governor Glenn Stevens to wait another month to increase borrowing costs tomorrow, 14 of 19 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg predict he will boost the benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point to 4 percent.

Boosting the benchmark rate tomorrow would make Stevens the first central banker from a Group of 20 economy to raise borrowing costs this year quick payday loans. He was also the first in the world to increase rates three times last quarter, when he raised the key rate in three quarter-point steps to 3.75 percent from a half- century low of 3 percent.

Business Investment

Profits at construction companies declined 2.7 percent in the fourth quarter and manufactures advanced 8.1 percent, today’s report said. Wholesale traders jumped 29 percent and hotels and restaurants gained 28.5 percent.

A report published last week showed business investment jumped in the fourth quarter at almost three times the pace predicted by analysts as companies raised their forecasts for investment plans to the highest level in five years.

BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s largest mining company, said last month it will increase capital spending on iron-ore mines and oil fields by 63 percent next year to $20.8 billion from $12.8 billion this year.

Rising Chinese demand for Australian iron ore and coal is stoking a record boom in mining investment that may last more than a decade, central bank Deputy Governor Ric Battellino said on Feb. 23. Investment in new mines, ports and infrastructure may reach 6 percent of gross domestic product, more than double the amount spent during the last resources boom in the late 1970s, he said.

Faster Growth

GDP probably rose 0.9 percent in the fourth quarter from the previous three months, when it gained 0.2 percent, according to the median estimate of 18 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The economy probably expanded 2.4 percent from a year earlier, they said. The figures will be released at 11:30 a.m. on March 3.

Inventories held by companies gained 0.2 percent in the fourth quarter from the previous three months, today’s report showed. Economists forecast a 0.5 percent increase.

Retail sales rose 0.5 percent in January after falling in December for the first time in five months and building approvals gained for a third straight month, according to Bloomberg surveys of analysts ahead of reports to be released tomorrow.

Gross operating profit measures earnings before tax, interest, depreciation and amortization. It excludes asset sales and foreign-exchange gains or losses.

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Standard & Poor’s said late yesterday it may lower its BBB+ rating by the end of March and Moody’s Investors Service said today it may reduce its A2 grade in a few months. The warnings further complicate the government’s effort to persuade investors that it can slash its fiscal shortfall from last year’s 12.7 percent of gross domestic product.

The euro slumped to a one-year low against the yen, most stocks dropped and the premium on Greek 10-year bonds over German debt widened to the most since Feb. 8 on concern that the country may need EU assistance to avoid missing debt payments. Unions yesterday staged a strike to protest Prime Minister George Papandreou’s drive to slash spending.

“It’s getting more difficult than anticipated for the Greek government to implement the spending cuts it promised,” said Susumu Kato, chief economist in Tokyo at Credit Agricole Securities Asia. Further downgrades “may spread sovereign concerns through other European nations,” he said.

The country’s willingness to keep funding itself in the commercial bond market is key to S&P’s assessment, the company said. The rating could be pressured by lower profitability at the country’s banks or a decline in public support for the budget plan, it said. EU assistance could help if it was likely to lead to a “sustained reduction” in borrowing costs.

Two Grades

“We believe that a further downgrade of Greece of one to two notches is possible within a month,” S&P analysts led by Marko Mrsnik in London said in a statement.

Pierre Cailleteau, managing director of sovereign risk at Moody’s, said in an interview in Tokyo today it may act “in a few months” if policy makers appear to be deviating from their deficit-reduction plan. At the same time, Moody’s may stabilize its rating if Greece follows through with its austerity measures, he said.

“We have to let the government implement its plans,” Cailleteau said. “You can’t expect a government to be able to turn around public finances in a few days.”

S&P cut Greece’s rating in December from A- and signaled at the time it may reduce it again from BBB+. Moody’s lowered its rating by one step the same month.

ECB Rules

If Moody’s cuts its credit rating to the same level as the other major ratings companies, it could exacerbate Greece’s financial distress at the end of this year when the European Central Bank is due to revert to old collateral rules that were loosened during the global recession. Greek government bonds would then no longer be eligible as collateral at the ECB, making it even more difficult for the nation to borrow.

The euro dropped to 120.51 yen as of 11:20 a.m. in London from 122 cash advance america.03 yen in New York yesterday. It earlier touched 120.24 yen, the lowest since Feb. 24, 2009. The single currency has fallen about 6 percent against the dollar this year on concern Greece’s fiscal woes may extend to Spain, Portugal and other European nations seeking to pare budget gaps.

Credit-default swaps protecting the debt of Greece rose 10 basis points to 392, according to CMA DataVision. The spread between 10-year Greek bonds and similar-maturity German debt widened by 13 basis points, or 0.13 percentage point, to 352 basis points.

Tear Gas

Papandreou’s government is running into opposition at home to its strategy. Air-traffic controllers, customs and tax officials, train drivers, doctors at state-run hospitals and school teachers walked off the job yesterday to protest spending cuts. Police fired tear-gas and clashed with demonstrators in central Athens after a march organized by labor unions.

Greek bonds have slumped, driving up borrowing costs, as investors fear the government will fail to meet its pledge to cut its budget gap to 8.7 percent of GDP this year. It aims to cut the deficit below the EU’s 3 percent limit in 2012.

The premium investors demand to hold Greece’s 10-year securities instead of Germany’s rose to the most in more than two weeks.

The government needs to sell 53 billion euros ($72 billion) of debt this year, the equivalent of 20 percent of GDP. The yield on the country’s two-year note yesterday rose to the most since Feb. 9.

EU governments are looking for guarantees that Papandreou will slash spending before they spell out what help they may offer. EU and ECB officials visited Athens this week to verify that budget cuts are being implemented.

Additional Measures

Under proposals adopted this month by euro-area finance ministers, the Greek government will have to take additional measures to cut its budget gap if it fails to satisfy the European Commission next month that its current strategy is on track. These may include higher value-added tax, a levy on luxury goods, higher energy taxes and spending cuts, they said.

“There will be some conditions attached” to European assistance for Greece, Cailleteau said. “I don’t see the evidence that would justify these kinds of assertions that Europe will not help Greece.”

German, French and Greek voters are “in denial” about Greece’s ability to get its deficit under control without external aid, Barry Eichengreen, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of a 2006 history of the European economy, said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday.

Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said Feb. 23 that the government will do “everything it needs to meet” its targets and that any decisions on possible new measures will be announced after talks with European governments.

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The Texas-based company beat Wall Street’s expectations, however, on solid sales across all its segments as businesses started spending on IT again.

Net income dropped to $334 million, or 17 cents per share, compared with $351 million, or 18 cents per share a year ago.

Results included a one-time charge of 11 cents per share for special items, mainly related to the company’s $3.9 billion acquisition of Perot Systems in November. Without the charge, Dell (DELL, Fortune 500) said it earned 28 cents per share. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial, who typically exclude one-time items from their estimates, were looking for 27 cents.

Sales rose 11% to $14.9 billion from $13.4 billion last year, beating analysts’ forecast of $13.85 billion.

In a conference call with analysts following the results, chief financial officer Brian Gladden and Dell chairman and CEO Michael Dell said they expect to see an uptick in commercial sales in the next year and continuing into fiscal 2011 as businesses upgrade to Windows 7.

Gladden said the company is focused on cutting overhead and manufacturing costs and in simplifying its supply chain. Last year, Dell announced plans to trim expenses by $4 billion annually by the end of fiscal 2011. Gladden noted that in the last two years, Dell had consolidated its manufacturing facilities to six from 11.

"Ongoing competitor pressure and economic realities never stop, and we can’t either," he said in the call. "We’re moving into the next phase of our transformation."

While Dell’s financials beat analyst expectations, the news comes with a mixed bag of concerns such as high consumer sales with lower margins, and tight commodity prices, said Shannon Cross, an analyst with Cross Research. On the upside, the company is investing in key growth areas, she said.

"The biggest concern is a lack of leverage in the model," she said. "People had hoped to see more of that revenue upside fall through to the bottom line."

Segment by segment

Analysts say trends point to a hardware-driven uptick in IT spending during the recent holiday months. Notebook and desktop computer sales together account for more than half of Dell’s revenue.

Dell reported a 16% year-over-year jump in laptop sales and a 3% drop in revenue from desktops.

Overall, consumer sales were up 11%. That’s better than expected, Gladden said in the conference call. That said, operating margins in the consumer segment were below a target 1% to 2%, due to holiday discounts, he noted.

Software sales from Dell’s third largest division were flat. Meanwhile server sales rose 26%, while sales in Dell’s tech services division were up 51%, year-over-year.

The company’s acquisition of Perot Systems in November marked a strategic shift toward ramping up its technology services market share and taking on Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500) and IBM (IBM, Fortune 500).

Revenue from Dell’s public business unit jumped 16% to $3.8 billion, with sales from services more than doubling, due in large part from the Perot addition.

Dell’s number one rival HP reported results Wednesday that blew past Wall Street’s expectations. The company said earnings jumped 25% on 8% rise in sales.

"HP had a lot more room to cut costs that Dell did, and HP has seen far more of the revenue upside fall through to their bottom line. HP is more focused on the consumer, so they’ve benefited from consumer strength more than Dell has," Cross pointed out.

For the full year, Dell reported a 42% drop in earnings and a 13% drop in sales over the year before. 

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Mike Goss, a Toyota spokesman, said the company will retain all of its workers during the suspensions, which will take place at plants in Kentucky and Texas in the weeks ahead.

The temporary shutdowns are aimed at adjusting production levels following a series of recalls that forced Toyota to halt sales of some of its most popular models.

"We don’t want inventory to build up for our dealers," Goss said. "We can’t keep sending vehicles to dealers until they can start moving those vehicles."

He said the company has used other methods to slow production in the past, such as limiting overtime, but that "elimination days are kind of the final step in that process."

The Kentucky plant, where Toyota’s top-selling Camry is made, will not produce cars on Feb. 26. Goss said the plant could go dark on a few more days the following week, though no official plans have been made.

The Texas plant will halt production the week of March 15 and again in mid April. The plant, where Toyota makes Tundra pickup trucks, will be modified to begin producing Tacoma trucks during the suspension, Goss said.

Toyota has recalled more than 8.1 million vehicles worldwide for problems related to sudden acceleration and unresponsive break pedals, among other things. The company has apologized for the safety lapses and pledged to repair the recalled vehicles quickly.

Meanwhile, the number of customer complaints filed with federal safety regulators has spiked in recent weeks. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there have been a total of 34 Toyota complaints alleging fatalities since 2000.

The widely publicized safety issues have taken a toll on sales. Earlier this month, Toyota said January sales fell 16% from a year earlier, worse than a forecast of a 12% year-over-year decline from sales tracker Edmunds.com.

To help revive sales, the automaker is considering a variety of incentive options aimed at drawing customers back into its showrooms.

At the same time, Toyota has launched a public relations campaign aimed at salvaging the company’s once-sterling reputation.

Toyota’s president, Akio Toyoda, and other company executives will take questions about the recall efforts Wednesday at a press conference in Tokyo.

The company has been ramping up lobbying, consulting and attorney teams ahead of appearances on Capitol Hill. Toyota is scheduled to go before two House committees next week and a Senate committee next month.  

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The company (NASDAQ:GOOG) said on a blog Saturday that it will stop automaticly subscribing users to follow the postings of their close Gmail contacts. Now it will only suggest users follow people from their Gmail contacts and leave it up them to do so.

Privacy advocates criticized Google for this automatic following feature, saying it spread the names and contact information of people around without their permission.

This is the second time in Buzz's first week that Google has had to adjust the service in the face of negative postings on Twitter, blogs and on the Buzz service itself business card. On Thursday, the company made it easier for users to keep photos and other information from public view.

"We quickly realized that we didn't get everything quite right," product manager Todd Jackson wrote on Saturday's blog posting. "We're very sorry for the concern we've caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback. We'll continue to do so."

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Both companies are subsidiaries of Davenport, Iowa-based Lee Enterprises Inc., which also owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Williams has been publisher of the Suburban Journals since 2007. Before that, he was Lee’s corporate director of sales and development and advertising manager for the Missoulian in Missoula, Mont. He spent a decade with Gannett Co. Inc. before joining Lee in 1998. Williams, who is married with four grown children, graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in advertising paydayloans.

Greg Veon, Lee’s vice president for publishing, said Williams was selected after a nationwide search for a new publisher.

Williams will be replaced by Tom Wiley, a Lee executive now in charge of the Suburban Journals and Daily Journal in Park Hills.

The current publisher of the Illinoisan, Dennis DeRossett, is leaving the paper to become executive director of the Illinois Press Association.

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“Everything points towards the direction of a recovery,” Sanchez said in Sydney. While the central bank forecasts growth of 3.2 percent to 4.2 percent this year, “I’m ready to be surprised as to the results of the economic recovery,” he said.

Mexico’s $1.09 trillion economy was the worst performer in Latin America last year, shrinking 10.1 percent in the second quarter and 6.2 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier. Gross domestic product may expand “slightly” more than the government’s current 3 percent estimate this year, Deputy Finance Minister Alejandro Werner said Feb. 5.

Sanchez is among policy makers visiting Sydney this week to attend a symposium organized by the Reserve Bank of Australia to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The Basel, Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements is also hosting a meeting of central bank officials in Sydney.

Global policy makers have to be “very careful” about how quickly they withdraw stimulus measures after cutting interest rates and boosting public spending to counter the deepest global recession since World War II, Sanchez said yesterday.

“There is a tradeoff between sustaining the stimulus measures and having some risks as to maintaining those,” he said. “You have a risk of withdrawing too quickly, of leaving those measures too rapidly, so that this recovery may be interrupted. You want to be very careful to maintain those stimulus measures for the right time.”

Inflation Outlook

Central banks also have to remain watchful of inflation and maintain price stability, he said.

“Every country has different situations as to the inflation prospects, but I’m confident also that the inflation pressures will continue to be relatively subdued in the near future,” Sanchez said.

Mexico’s inflation in December was 3.57 percent, the slowest since 2006.

The central bank kept the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 4.5 percent in January for a fifth straight meeting and warned that higher costs for state-controlled goods such as gasoline may fuel broader price increases. The latest monetary policy position is consistent with the central bank’s growth forecasts, Sanchez said.

The region’s second-largest economy probably shrank about 7 percent in 2009, the most since 1932, the central bank estimates.

“I’m very optimistic about the prospects of the Mexican economy in the short term and long term,” Sanchez said. “We had a very harsh recession last year. We’re going to have a very important improvement relative to the base we had last year.”

The fourth quarter probably showed “very good dynamism of economic activity” and the unemployment rate has declined, Sanchez said.

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Toyota Motor Corp. recalled eight vehicles Jan. 21 and stopped selling those vehicles five days later because their accelerator pedals could stick in a depressed position. Toyota is sending dealers a piece of steel about the size of a postage stamp that can be inserted into the accelerator mechanism and eliminate the friction that causes the problem.

Kent Newbold, president of Newbold Toyota in O’Fallon, Ill., said Wednesday that he was even offering customers free tickets to a movie at the nearby O’Fallon 15 Cine while repairs are made to their recalled vehicles.

Nobody had taken him up on that offer, but he said it would remain until all of the recalled vehicles were fixed. "They’re our customers and we’re going to take care of them. … I was even tempted to sneak out and see ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks 2′ myself," Newbold said.

Jim White Toyota, a dealership in Toledo, Ohio, received about 350 steel pieces, or shims, and began repairs Wednesday morning. By mid-afternoon, about 25 cars were fixed, said Terry Treter, service manager.

Repairs were going smoothly and a little faster than the half-hour Toyota estimated, he said. Technicians do a test drive as part of the repair.

Dealers said they would extend service hours as needed to make repairs at the convenience of their customers. "The main thing the dealers want to do is to get the cars repaired and back on the road," said John S. Poppell, president of Twin City Toyota in Herculaneum.

Tom Seeger, owner of Seeger Toyota in Creve Coeur, added, "We’re going to get this done as seamlessly and comfortably for our customers as possible."

Dealers said customers had been calm despite a warning early Wednesday from U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who said owners of recalled Toyotas should stop driving them. LaHood later said he misspoke and told owners to get their cars repaired.

"There was an (increase in) concerned calls five minutes after Ray LaHood made his first comment, but people calmed down after he later explained himself," Seeger said.

Toyota is giving U.S. dealers payments of up to $75,000 to help them offer extra measures such as house calls. The automaker also suggested other steps, such as additional hires to help with recall repairs, dedicated recall service lanes and complimentary oil changes.

Toyota is sending checks this week based on the number of cars each dealer sold in 2009. Dealers who sold fewer than 500 cars will get $7,500. Dealers who sold more than 4,000 will get $75,000.

Robert Kelly of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

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