Starbucks, Comcast, RBS price deals at start of predicted busy week in high grade

By Andrea Heisinger

Omaha, Aug. 20 - Investment-grade trading was stable again Monday, prompting speculation that it will be a busy week for new issues - and the first session certainly set a vigorous tone.

Starbucks Corp., Royal Bank of Scotland plc and Comcast Corp all priced deals.

Starbucks upsized its offering of 10-year 6.25% senior notes from $500 million where it was talked to $550 million. The notes priced at a spread of 165 basis points with a yield of 6.276%.

The RBS issue of $2 billion in Libor plus 15 bps senior floating-rate notes priced at par.

And Comcast priced a $3 billion offering in two tranches. The $1 billion tranche of 10-year notes priced at a spread of 170 bps while the $2 billion tranche of 30-year notes priced at a spread of 199 bps.

Bookrunners were Barclays Capital, Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Morgan Stanley.

General Electric Capital Corp. also announced terms of $5 billion of senior unsecured floating-rate notes that were priced Friday. The Libor plus 10 bps notes came at par.

"It was really busy today," a market source said. "There's definitely a better tone."

At the end of last week, sources were predicting if the stability continued, new issues could come pouring in this week from those waiting for the market's recent volatility to subside.

"There's a big backlog from people," a source said. "It's going to be busy this week."

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