Danaher Raises $3 Billion in Record Private-Placement Bond Sale
(Bloomberg) — Danaher Corp. has completed what is being called a record $3 billion private-placement bond sale.
The Washington, D.C.-based life sciences company sold roughly 2.38 billion Swiss francs of notes in seven parts to help finance its acquisition of US-listed diagnostics firm Masimo Corp., according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not be named.
Mizuho Financial Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. arranged the sale, the person said.
The deal is the largest in what’s considered the traditional private-placement market of raising capital directly from large institutional investors, according to Richard Thompson, Mizuho’s head of debt private placements. Danaher’s issuance “demonstrated the significant depth of the private-placement market for cross-currency transactions,” particularly larger acquisitions, Thompson told Bloomberg News.
Spokespeople for Citi, Goldman and Danaher either declined to comment or didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The bonds mature in five to 30 years, the person said. The largest tranche, a 648 million franc 15-year note, pays annual interest of 2.38% and priced 1.4 percentage point over the swap rate, the person added.
Companies, particularly firms like hyperscalers that have been raising hundreds of billions of dollars to fund artificial intelligence efforts, are broadening their financing sources amid efforts to avoid fatiguing any particular group of investors. Amazon.com Inc. last week sold its first Swiss bonds, raising 2.8 billion francs.
Danaher had already extended beyond the dollar-debt market before this week’s franc note sale. It priced €3 billion ($3.5 billion) of bonds last month, its first euro-denominated notes since 2020, to help fund the purchase of Masimo. That takeover, valued at $9.9 billion including debt, is expected to close later this year.
Meanwhile, a Danaher unit last October sold 1.25 billion francs of broadly syndicated notes.
The company’s last dollar-bond issuance was in December 2021.
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