Our US LevFin Pipeline is a monthly report tracking upcoming and potential debt syndications, with a focus on expected new-money supply. It’s based on publicly available information, and laid out as three tables:

• Confirmed Debt Financing — Deal and accompanying debt financing have been announced
• Expected Debt Financing — Deal has been announced, debt financing is expected
• Potential Debt Financing — Potential debt-financed deal has been reported

We focus on deals above $1bn in expected enterprise value. Entries are sorted in descending order, with the newest additions at the top. Click here for the full report.

Art of the tariff

It increasingly looks like the Trump effect that was supposed to spur new M&A and LBO activity is either not coming or at least will be delayed to beyond 2025, sources told 9fin.

A number of new-money deals that were originally committed in the weeks following Trump’s election need to be financed in the current environment. However, the volatility stemming from tariffs, the rate outlook, and consumer sentiment is causing pricing to widen out and docs to tighten.

Those are not insurmountable obstacles for deals inked months ago, but the volatility may be starting to scare off future issuers from going all-in at this moment.

“Coming into the year there was a lot of hope that the Trump administration’s regulatory relief and less scrutiny on M&A would spur some pick up in M&A,” one PM said. “With all the uncertainty we're seeing that's kind of been either pushed out or may not happen at all. So that's been very disappointing.”

So while the current pipeline is still full of deals to do in the near term, sources are worried how robust the flow will be next quarter and into the back half of the year.

For example, last week Clearlake Capital announced a deal to acquire business analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet for $7.7bn, including debt. Morgan Stanley is leading the bridge financing after some wrangling over the underwriting fees and terms of the deal.

The market volatility couldn’t dislodge such a deal that was already in motion, but it may be enough to dissuade the next sponsor-backed financing.

“It's not as if Dun & Bradstreet was going to suddenly grind to a halt just because we've had volatility in the last two weeks, but the Dun and Bradstreet of what might be announced in three months is probably halted for the moment,” another banker away from the deal said. “The current pipeline is always a lagging indicator of the environment of a couple of months ago.”