Awards for Excellence 2018
Big and clever, that is what you needed to be to be a leader in the financing business in the last 12 months, and no one achieved that combination better in the region than Bank of America Merrill Lynch, North America’s best bank for financing.
The bank, under head of global CIB Christian Meissner, topped the US debt capital markets league table for the period, according to Dealogic, but that product strength hardly tells the full story. It is a leader in investment-grade syndicated loans, private placements and is doing more IPOs and convertible bonds than in the recent past. But what captures the breadth of the bank’s platform is its roster of complex strategic financings.
Christian Meissner |
And where better to start than with its work for CVS Health? Not only was it joint lead arranger and joint bookrunner on the $49 billion senior unsecured bridge backing the roughly $77 billion pending acquisition of Aetna – the biggest bridge in the period – but it followed that up with a $5 billion term loan, active books and B&D on a $40 billion senior bond this year, which was the third-largest investment-grade bond ever.