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Netflix has no chill.

The streaming giant is looking to get even bigger after announcing this morning a massive $82.7bn deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming business, which includes its film and television studios as well as HBO and HBO Max.

Wells Fargo lined up a $59bn committed bridge loan to help fund the transaction, which is among the largest ever bank commitments. Anheuser-Busch InBev holds the record for its $75bn bridge that it acquired from lead Banco Santander for its acquisition of SABMiller back in 2015 that was later syndicated out with a $48bn bond package.

WBD is in the process of splitting its business into two separate and publicly traded streaming and network businesses, which is expected to be completed in Q3 next year. Netflix would acquire the streaming assets and leave most of the debt at the networks division (the $72bn equity valuation assumes Netflix would absorb about $10bn of WBD debt).

The street is expecting a Netflix bond deal will emerge in the $30bn-$40bn range to term out the bridge financing, one IG portfolio manager said. Netflix generates around $15bn in annual free cash flow and has $8bn of debt outstanding currently, which means this deal could potentially 5x its gross debt.

Such a transaction would make it one of the largest bond financings of all time, but that’s a 2026 or maybe even a 2027 event, depending on how long regulatory and shareholder approvals take.

Pushback on the transaction is already rumbling, with the White House reportedly viewing the deal with “heavy skepticism” as well as warnings from rival bidder Paramount on the regulatory headwinds facing a Netflix deal.

For now, the market has plenty on its plate as this week brought another $30bn of supply from 25 borrowers.

Pharmaceutical company Merck led the way with an $8bn eight-tranche bond offering to fund its $9.2bn acquisition of Cidata Therapeutics. GE Healthcare also came to the bond market this week to help fund its purchase of Canada’s Intelerad with a $1.25bn dual-tranche bond offering.

Both offerings were the latest in a string of healthcare and pharma related notes to hit the bond market as M&A in the sector ramped up in the back half of the year. Check out 9fin’s full coverage of the trend here and here.

Return of the BDCs

The other major trend on the week was the return of BDC bonds.

The small sub-sector of IG debt was largely shuttered after concerns arose in October surrounding fraudulent loans within the private credit portfolios. But last week Goldman Sachs issued debt out of its private credit corporation that priced with large concessions, then this week MSD Investment’s BDC came with slightly lower concessions, and finally Apollo Debt Solutions BDC issued with hardly any concession in a deal that tightened by 40bps from start to finish with a book that held in at more than 5x covered.

“This week’s deals were highly oversubscribed, underscoring strong investor demand for the sector,” one source close to this week’s deals said.

Investors expressed some trepidation around the lack of transparency in the sector, as we wrote this week, but there is plenty of yield at play to help compensate for those risks, others said.

Fundamentals remain strong

All the supply over the last couple of months has done little to slow down enthusiasm for the asset class.

Inflows for investment grade bond funds and ETFs were up $5.78bn this week from +$5.37bn last week, according to a note from BofA research.

“The IG backdrop is bullet proof and weekly inflows have been relentless,” one European banker following the sector globally said. “That technical solves everything between macro blips, equity corrections or concerns about hyperscalers.”

We’ll publish more on the 2026 outlook in the weeks to come, but generally the market expects this strong backdrop to continue.

One US banker this week said spreads are expected to tighten from current levels even as gross supply increases year-over-year. The supply outlook largely hinges on how much debt the tech companies want or need to issue to fund their data center buildouts and how much M&A accelerates next year.

If Netflix is any indication, it might be smart to bet the over.