NEW YORK: Intercontinental Exchange Inc (ICE) is selling US$3.75bil of US investment-grade bonds.
The sale took place on Tuesday, less than two weeks after the company announced a US$6bil deal to acquire MarketAxess Holdings Inc.
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) priced fixed-rate notes across four parts, with maturities of three to 10 years, according to a person familiar with the deal who asked not to be identified discussing a private matter.
The longest tenor will yield 0.82 percentage point more than Treasuries, compared with initial price talk of about 1.15 percentage points.
A floating-rate tranche was dropped during syndication.
The deal was seeking to raise about US$3.5bil, other people with knowledge of the transaction said on Tuesday.
Bank of America Corp and Wells Fargo & Co were active managers on all of the deal’s bonds. ICE said last month that it entered into a financing commitment letter with Bank of America for as much as US$6.25bil of bridge financing for the acquisition.
Buying MarketAxess would give the exchange operator one of the world’s biggest fixed-income trading platforms.
Two other merger and acquisition financings were among Tuesday’s 10 transactions in the high-grade market, a day after 19 companies issued notes in the largest rush in seven months.
Martin Marietta Materials Inc raised US$5.5bil to help fund its pending US$13.5bil purchase of building-materials supplier Lhoist North America. — Bloomberg
