The US leveraged loan market is coming under further pressure with its second pulled deal in a week and a slew of investor-friendly changes made on other transactions to help get them over the line.
The latest casualty is drugmaker Mallinckrodt, which shelved a $1.49 billion offering on Friday, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing a private matter.
It follows a pulled deal from specialty chemicals producer Nouryon earlier this week, marking the eighth deal to be yanked from the market since August, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Representatives for Mallinckrodt and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which is managing the sale, didn’t immediately provide a comment.
Marketing for Mallinckrodt’s loan, a so-called repricing which would have cut the borrowing rate on the debt by as much as 0.75 percentage point, began on Monday. Investors had until Thursday to put in their orders.
Demand for risky debt has softened in the past few weeks for a number of reasons. Primarily, debt offerings tied to acquisitions and buyouts have picked up, giving investors an opportunity to get better returns than those offered on repricings.
Some investors have also been spooked by the bankruptcy of auto-parts supplier First Brands, which filed after failing to complete a $6 billion refinancing. And concerns about higher costs in the chemical sector impacted demand for Nouryon’s offering.
Secondary-market prices, meanwhile, have fallen almost every day for the last two weeks, a Bloomberg index shows.
Elsewhere, banks wrapped up a leveraged loan sale to help fund an acquisition by MJH Life Sciences, but had to offer one of the steepest discounts of the year as investors become pickier about some risky debt deals.
A group of banks led by Banco Santander SA, meanwhile, will be forced to keep a portion of a $2.7 billion financing to support an acquisition. Commitments for the loan sale are due Tuesday.
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