Wall Street’s Stab at Refinancing Finastra’s Private Debt Fails

(Bloomberg) — An attempt to get better terms for Finastra Group Holdings Ltd.’s more than $5 billion debt load — made up of one of the largest loans in private credit history — has fallen apart, according to people familiar with the matter.

After weeks of negotiations, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are stuck at square one after pitching investors in the broadly syndicated loan market on a deal to swap out the debt of the Vista Equity Partners-backed fintech. The package under consideration included a first-lien term loan for as much as $5 billion as well as a $1 billion second-lien, said the people who asked not to be identified as the details are private.

Loan buyers wanted to be paid more than the banks were offering, the people said. The British company was looking to sell its subordinated debt at about 6 percentage points over the Secured Overnight Financing Rate to help it slash costs on the expensive debt load.

Spokespeople for Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Vista declined to comment while Finastra didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The failure to get a better rate for the debt of the software and services provider that runs everything from banks’ websites to back-office systems is in part a symptom of the volatility sweeping across the broader market. Trade turmoil has prompted investors in the leveraged finance market to demand steeper discounts on new deals.

In addition to being one of the biggest, Finastra’s 2023 refinancing, at 7.25 percentage points over the benchmark, was also among the most expensive private credit deals at that time. 

There are other signs of market pressure. Leveraged loans are trading at about 96.3 cents on the dollar, compared to almost 98 cents at the start of the year, according to an index.

The original group of lenders was a veritable who’s who of the private credit market, including Oak Hill Advisors, Blue Owl Capital Inc., HPS Investment Partners and Ares Management Corp. Vista supplied roughly $1 billion of preferred equity at the time.

One course of action being weighed is whether to refinance the deal in the private credit market and increase the loan size to pay down the preferred equity investment, some of the people said. 

Conversations are ongoing and the plans may change, the people added.

In September, the software provider mandated Evercore Inc. to evaluate the sale of its capital markets arm, Bloomberg News reported. And in January, Finastra appointed Chris Walters as its new chief executive officer, citing his experience in driving “significant performance improvement” at other financial services companies. Before joining Finastra, Walters was CEO of Pluralsight, and Avantax.

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