Lehman Brothers is leading the financing backing Syniverse Technologies' $57 million acquisition of Interoperator Services North America from Electronic Data Systems Corp. Lehman is the lead on the company's existing credit as well. "They have been our lead bank since inception," stated Ray Lawless, cfo of the independent provider of wireless transaction processing. "They did a very good job in a very difficult market way back at the end of 2001, beginning of 2002, when we took the company private from Verizon."
The new $244 million "B" loan replaces the company's existing $196 million "B" loan and will reduce the interest rate by 50 basis points to LIBOR plus 3%, Lawless said. The credit also includes a $35 million revolver which is unchanged by the new transaction. Lehman bankers did not return calls.
As a result of the new financing both Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's eliminated the negative outlook on the company, Lawless noted. Both ratings agencies say the stable outlook reflects the fact that the company is expected to continue to generate free cash flow. Moody's assigned a Ba3 rating to the credit and S&P assigned its BB- bank loan rating and a recovery rating of 1, indicating 100% recovery of principal in the event of a default.