Veritas Said to Offer Bonds to Complete Sale of Hung Buyout Debt

(Bloomberg) -- Wall Street banks are offloading the final portion of the financing backing 2015's biggest U.S. leveraged buyout.

Lenders that include Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp. are offering about $672 million of secured bonds that back Carlyle Group LP's takeover of Symantec Inc.'s data-storage unit Veritas Inc., according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The lenders have already sold more than $3.5 billion of debt, including senior-ranking loans and junior notes, they were left holding.

The Veritas deal was the biggest casualty of turbulence in credit markets at the end of last year, as fixed income investors spurned banks that had committed to sell risky corporate debt for takeovers. Lenders have been able to resurrect deals as sentiment toward speculative-grade securities has improved amid a global plunge in yields. For Veritas, banks have been able to sell some unsecured bonds and leveraged loans this year.

A Morgan Stanley representative declined to comment. A spokesman for Bank of America couldn't immediately comment.

The banks are offering $405 million of seven-year dollar-denominated bonds, and 240 million euros ($266.7 million) of similar-maturity securities, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the terms are private. Books on the dollar bonds closed Tuesday, while those for the euro-debt will close Wednesday, the person said.

--With assistance from Sridhar Natarajan To contact the reporter on this story: Sally Bakewell in London at sbakewell1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nabila Ahmed at nahmed54@bloomberg.net, Faris Khan, Eric J. Weiner