Mega unitranche trend falters as direct lenders cut hold sizes
- Bill Weisbrod
- +Sasha Padbidri
In the world of leveraged finance, the supersize unitranche is king. Or at least, it was until recently.
In March, Softbank got a $5.1bn unitranche facility from a group of lenders led by Apollo. In May, Blackstone led a group of funds including Blue Owl, Ares and Oak Hill to provide a $4.5bn unitranche for Hellman & Friedman’s acquisition of Information Resource.
Both were among the biggest privately placed debt financings of all time.
Other large-scale private credit deals announced in the first half of 2022 include Golub Capital upsizing its loan to Risk Strategies by $950m — bringing the total deal size to $3.8bn — and the $2.5bn debt facility Blackstone, Apollo and Golub provided for Thoma Bravo’s Anaplan LBO.
But there has been a notable lack of such deals since the end of the second quarter. What happened?