AstraZeneca, the U.K.'s second- largest pharmaceutical company, sold $6.9 billion of bonds in the biggest U.S. debt offering in more than five years.
AstraZeneca will use proceeds from the sale to pay back commercial paper that financed the $15.2 billion purchase of U.S. biotechnology firm MedImmune in June.
The London-based drug maker took advantage of a resurgence in demand for investment-grade debt to replace commercial paper. Investors snapped up the bonds in part because drugmakers have been relatively untouched by losses on subprime home loans that have extended to banks and mortgage lenders.
``There's still cash out there for investment-grade offerings,'' said Sabur Moini, a portfolio manager at Payden & Rygel in Los Angeles, which oversees $50 billion in fixed-income securities. ``It helps that it's not a bank or financial institution but a pharmaceutical company selling bonds.''
AstraZeneca's offering ranks as the biggest since March 2002, when General Electric Co. sold $11 billion of fixed- and floating-rate debt. Borrowers sold $92.6 billion of bonds in August, a record for that month, Bloomberg data show.
More at Bloomberg
No comments:
Post a Comment