Mars announces 8-part bond; headlines big M&A financing week

By Shankar Ramakrishnan

(Reuters) - Family-owned candy elephantine Mars announced a eight-part investment-grade enslaved offering connected Wednesday to assistance concern its takeover of Pringles shaper Kellanova, according to a presumption sheet, successful what is expected to beryllium 1 of the largest acquisition financing deals this year.

Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Rabobank were the bookrunners for the offering, which is expected to rise anyplace betwixt $25 to $30 billion, they said.

Reuters past week reported the bonds volition beryllium announced this week.

According to the word expanse of the offering, Mars, which is offering bonds with maturities that scope from 2 years to 40 years, said it volition redeem the notes astatine a terms of 101 if the acquisition was not completed by August 20, 2026.

The Mars bonds headlined what has been a dense week for acquisition financing. On Monday, plan bundle shaper Synopsys raised $10 cardinal selling six tranches of bonds that had maturities from 2 years to 30. The bonds would assistance concern its $34 cardinal takeover of Ansys.

Demand for Synopsys bonds was monolithic with books covered immoderate 3 to 5 times the issuance size, according to Informa Global Markets data.

If Mars raised $25 billion, it would go the eighth largest woody of each clip and much than treble the magnitude of M&A-related investment-grade enslaved issuance for the year, said IGM.

The announcement of the enslaved was made connected a time erstwhile markets were comparatively unchangeable aft a selloff earlier successful the week arsenic U.S. President Trump escalated a planetary commercialized warfare connected Tuesday by imposing 25% tariffs connected apical commercialized partners, Canada and Mexico, citing ineffective borderline controls.

(Reporting by Shankar Ramakrishnan, Editing by Nick Zieminski)