Mafco Worldwide's $110 million term loan "B" broke in the secondary at par 3/4 last week. JPMorgan and Bear Stearns launched the deal in November. The credit, which also includes a $15 million revolver, will help fund the holding company M&F Worldwide Corp.'s purchase of Clarke American from Honeywell.
Moody's Investors Service assigned a B1 rating to the bank loan. The rating reflects Mafco's small size, non-diversified product offering and customer concentration. In a release, it said that Mafco, which is the largest supplier of licorice extracts, relies on cigarettes as the largest end-use of its products and that uncertainties associated with the sourcing of licorice roots from Central Asian countries constrain the ratings, adding that the global demand for cigarettes is flat. Officials at Mafco did not return calls.