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Thursday, March 12, 2015

TRLPC: Abbvie and NXP boost M&A volumes, (NYQ: MS)

The loan market received another boost this week as drugmaker Abbvie and semiconductor company NXP boosted U.S. M&A volume to $152.7 billion so far this year, including completed and deals in the pipeline. On the investment grade side, AbbVie is leading the charge backing its $21 billion acquisition of Pharmacyclics with an $18 billion 364-day senior unsecured bridge loan from Morgan Stanley and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ. The bridge loan, which is the largest financing so far this year, is in the market and is expected to be syndicated among the company's relationship banks."It seems that most of the activity has been on investment grade as opposed to non-investment grade," a banker said. "The capacity for investment grade is bigger particularly with the regulatory overhaul that's been going on."Frontier Communications has lined up the second-biggest financing with an $11.6 billion bridge loan to fund its $10.5 billion acquisition of wireline assets from Verizon. The two deals have helped push investment grade M&A deal volume to $47 billion in 2015.The Abbvie bridge loan will fund the cash component of the acquisition alongside cash on AbbVie's balance sheet. The deal is expected to be replaced with bonds only.

Morgan Stanley, is a global financial services company that, through its subsidiaries and affiliates, provides its products and services to a range of clients and customers, including corporations, governments, financial institutions and individuals. Shares of MS traded higher by 4.12% or $1.44/share to $36.39. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $28.31 and as high as $39.19. On average, 10561900 shares of MS exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 6669285.



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