Actavis Places Second-Largest Bond Offering Ever

(RTTNews) - Drugmaker Actavis plc (ACT) said Tuesday that it has priced an offering of $21 billion of senior unsecured notes, making it the second largest corporate bond offering in history.

Actavis plans to use the net proceeds from the bond offering to partly finance its $66 billion acquisition of Botox maker Allergan, Inc. (AGN). The company recently raised $9.0 billion in net proceeds from the offerings of ordinary shares and mandatory convertible preferred shares to partially fund the Allergan acquisition.

Actavis' debt offering was second only to Verizon Communications Inc.'s (VZ) $49 billion bond sale in September 2013 to finance its $130 billion acquisition of Vodafone Group plc's (VOD, VOD.L) stake in Verizon Wireless.

The Actavis bond offering has reportedly received about $90 billion in investor orders. J.P. Morgan, Mizuho Securities and Wells Fargo Securities are the joint book-running managers of the offering.

Tuesday also saw oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) tapping the bond market with an $8 billion debt offering.

For companies, the bond market clearly offers many ways to borrow. From an investor's perspective, the bond market offers a lot to consider.

However, large corporate bond offerings are becoming successful because of investors' desire for better returns amid low interest rates and low yielding government bonds.