Bonds Mergers and Acquisitions Equity US deals of the year
SYNDICATED LOANS
AT&T and Chase flex their muscles
Issuer: AT&T
Type of deal: syndicated loan
Amount: $30 billion
Launched: April 20 1999
Arrangers: Chase Manhattan, Goldman Sachs
Anything Olivetti can do, AT&T can do bigger. In late April last year, the acquisitive American telecoms group assembled a loan facility of $30 billion in a mere three working days after launching an unsolicited takeover bid for cable group MediaOne.
In a curious contractual arrangement, MediaOne had agreed to merge with another cable company, Comcast, but negotiated the right to a 45-day pause in the deal to consider any rival offers that might arise. Late in the day, AT&T swooped with an unsolicited public bid of $58 billion, outbidding Comcast. AT&T promised that it would put together the cash component of the offer within a week, and mandated Chase and Goldman Sachs to create a bank syndicate. The result was both the largest and the fastest syndicated loan ever compiled.
Gathering commitments
The leads pledged $5 billion each, and set about finding banks willing to throw in another $2 billion at a time. Three days later, the pledges had reached $42 billion, beating the $30 billion-plus in commitments that Olivetti had received in its worldwide search for acquisition finance a few weeks earlier.