 "KKR")
By Paula Seligson, Jeannine Amodeo and John Sage
A group of banks launched a $5 billion loan sale on Wednesday to help finance KKR & Co.’s purchase of a stake in Cotiviti Inc., according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
The sale is broken up into a $4.4 billion floating rate term loan led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and a $600 million fixed rate term loan led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the person added. KKR Capital Markets is part of both transactions.
Pricing discussions on the seven-year floating rate loan are for 3.5 percentage points over the Secured Overnight Financing Rate and a discounted price of 99.5 cents on the dollar, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing a private deal.
KKR’s agreement to buy the stake from Veritas Capital values the healthcare analytics company at about $11 billion, other people said. KKR worked the phones in recent weeks to round up investors willing to provide the committed financing, Bloomberg previously reported.
It’s a win for Wall Street banks that competed with private credit funds to provide one of the biggest debt packages in months. Both groups have been jockeying to finance a limited number of leveraged buyouts as private equity sponsors struggle to sell their portfolio companies.
The Wall Street Journal earlier reported KKR had agreed to buy the Cotiviti stake from Veritas.
