The €1.63bn seven year term loan ‘B’ was set to fund private equity group Platinum Equity’s acquisition of Urbaser.
Bank of America and Santander were joint global co-ordinators, with Banco de Sabadell, BBVA, BNP Paribas, CaixaBank, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, ING, Natixis and Société Générale acting as joint bookrunners.
There was a global investor call on July 15, with a commitment deadline chalked in for July 28. The company was given an expected BB rating by Fitch and B1 by Moody’s.
However, a transaction update was sent out by the leads on Friday morning, which said that while the company was encouraged by the strong response during syndication they had decided to postpone the deal.
One source close to the deal said the sponsor felt that the pricing and terms the company were set to achieve was more reflective of market technicals, like late-summer fatigue, than the fundamentals of the business. The company, the source added, was in no rush to push the deal through, and so decided to wait till after summer.
This isn’t the first deal to be postponed this month. Berkshire Hathaway-owned UK electrical distributor Northern Powergrid decided to push a prospective bond deal back to September. Last Friday, the arranger NatWest Markets thanked investors for their credit work, but said the company was looking forward to re-engaging with investors after the summer.
In June, Platinum Equity agreed to buy Urbaser from Chinese environmental services group China Tianying for an enterprise value of roughly $4.2bn.