Medline Industries Inc. is launching today a $7 billion equivalent cross-border term loan financing backing the buyout of the company by a private equity consortium including The Blackstone Group, The Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman.
When combined with an additional $3.77 billion of secured and $4 billion of unsecured debt financing, this LBO promises a massive intake of fresh supply to the leveraged finance markets, which have absorbed tremendous investor demand in 2021. But how does the Medline deal stack up historically? The following tables detail the largest deals, both all-time and since the global financial crisis, per LCD data.
Total financing via the loan and bond markets of roughly $14.77 billion ranks Medline as the largest LBO deal in the post-GFC era, surpassing the H.J. Heinz deal in 2013 that totaled $14.6 billion. It is the fourth-largest LBO financing of all time behind TXU in 2007 ($27.7 billion), HCA in 2006 ($22.5 billion) and First Data in 2007 ($16 billion).
Widening the scope beyond LBOs to include all deals in the leveraged finance markets, Medline will be the eighth-largest on record globally, and the third-largest post-crisis deal.
Looking at just the loan size of $7 billion-equivalent across the dollar and euro portions, it is the 12th-largest LBO financing of all time globally, based on the institutional loan amount, and the fourth-largest post-crisis behind Heinz ($9.5 billion), Refinitiv ($9.25 billion) and Dell ($7.1 billion).
