Worldpay's benchmark $9.4B LBO financing: Where it stands on biggest deals of all-time

Worldpay has begun marketing the debt financing supporting GTCR’s acquisition of a majority stake in the business from FIS.

Arrangers this week are pitching $4.4 billion-equivalent of institutional leveraged loan financing (the kind CLOs buy), split between a $3.4 billion dollar tranche and $1 billion-equivalent in euros, market sources say. Another $4 billion of secured debt will be forthcoming and denominated in dollars, euros, and sterling. A $1 billion revolving credit will also be included.

To be sure, it's one of the largest leveraged debt financings the market will have absorbed in some time. For a closer look at where this transaction stands historically, the following tables detail the largest deals, both all-time and since the Global Financial Crisis, per LCD data.

As proposed, Worldpay will rank as the ninth largest LBO financing for transactions spanning loan and bond markets in the US and Europe, sitting just behind McAfee from January 2022 and ahead of the Zayo Group deal from February 2020. Medline remains firmly atop the all-time list with $15.77 billion of total financing placed two years ago in September 2021.

In more recent history, Worldpay sits a bit higher in the rankings. Over the past five years, this deal will be the sixth largest LBO financing on record. It’s worth noting also that six of the largest financings since the Global Financial Crisis have come during this period.

Worldpay is allocating its fundraising effort fairly evenly across markets, with the institutional loan portion slightly higher, at $4.4 billion. That will place it in the eighth spot on the list of largest broadly syndicated term loan financings for a buyout over the past five years.

Worldpay also ranks as one of the largest technology-sector LBO financings in the past couple of years, slotting in at fourth on the list. Challenging conditions in the broadly syndicated market in 2022 and into 2023 enabled private credit lenders to step in and provide ever-growing financing commitments for buyouts, including several jumbo transactions in the tech sector.

This article originally appeared on PitchBook News