Plant Watch: Business News for April 2021
MaxxDrive industrial gear units provide high output torque from 132,000…
By Mary Page Bailey |
Thermo Fisher Scientific plans $600-million bioprocessing expansion
March 12, 2021 Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (Waltham, Mass.; www.thermofisher.com) plans to invest more than $600 million in capital investments to expand its bioprocessing production capabilities through 2022. These investments are expected to more than double the company’s current manufacturing capacity. Highlights of the investment include capacity expansions at several sites in the U.S., China, Scotland and Singapore. Furthermore, the company will open a new resin-manufacturing facility in Chelmsford, Mass.
Hexion to expand Portland manufacturing plant
Laura Benitez and Ruth McGavin, Bloomberg News
(Bloomberg) Public Power Corporation is planning to sell Europeâs first sustainability-linked high-yield bond this week, adding more weight to a fast-growing trend in the regionâs loan market.
The company, formerly known as Artemis, will hold investor calls at 12:30 p.m. London time Monday and conclude its meetings for a 500 million euro ($594 million) planned bond sale on Wednesday. The new issue is expected to be rated B/BB- by S&P and Fitch.
Sustainability-linked debt sales have taken off in Europeâs leveraged loan market in recent months. Those deals included so-called margin ratchets which will see those companies pay less if they hit specific goals, or more if they miss their targets. PPCâs new bond carries a penalty only however, with a higher coupon of 50 basis points if it fails to reduce its CO2 emissions by 40% by December 2022 from 2019.
January saw a number of sponsors turn to the increasingly competitive high-yield market to fund their buyouts
To date, all of the ESG-linked financings completed in the European leveraged loan space have been private equity-backed
Private equity firms focus on ESG topics, the inclusion of ESG-linked ratchets on sponsored loan transactions is perhaps a natural progression for the market to adopt
Europe s sponsored activity opened the year with a surge of new leveraged finance issuance in January, as private equity-backed borrowers hit the high-yield bond and leveraged loan markets for both new-money transactions and opportunistic deals.
In January there was €7.48 billion of European sponsored loan issuance, according to LCD, which is equivalent to nearly 20% of the total private equity-backed volume recorded in the whole of 2020. Of January s loan activity, roughly €3.12 billion was used to support buyouts, with the €965 million term loan supporting Carlyle s €2 billion c