Before the financial crisis, companies such as macquarie infrastructure company (mic) sought to enhance shareholder returns by employing high debt leverage. At the nadir of 2009, when leverage stood at six times Ebitda, the infrastructure fund's shares could be had for as little as 78 cents. Ahead of a transformational acquisition last week by the Macquarie Capital-run fund they traded at US$61.17. Lesson learned. MIC secured US$970m from an equity-heavy funding package comprising common stock and convertible debt, designed explicitly to preserve a BBB-investment-grade credit rating. "The book was very large [for the CB] and the deal was multiple times oversubscribed even with the upsize," said one banker close to the deal. "They could have raised more but they didn't want to raise more than US$350m in total."
展开▼
