Moody’s confirms Thomson Reuters

Moody's Investors Service said it confirmed Thomson Reuters Corp.'s Baa2 senior unsecured and Prime-2 commercial paper ratings.

The outlook is negative.

The action concludes the ratings review that commenced on Jan. 31.

Moody's initiated the review following the company’s announcement that it agreed to sell a 55% stake in its Financial & Risk division, its largest unit comprising nearly 55% of revenue, to Blackstone Group, CPP Investment Board and GIC via a leveraged buyout transaction valuing F&R at about $20 billion.

The transaction closed on Oct. 1, with Thomson Reuters retaining a 45% minority stake in F&R (doing business as Refinitiv US Holdings Inc.) and receiving gross cash proceeds in the form of a dividend totaling about $17 billion.

The company intends to use the proceeds to return about $10 billion of capital to shareholders, prepay roughly $4 billion of debt, deploy around $2 billion of cash to the balance sheet for future M&A and organic growth investments and pay about $1 billion of taxes, one-time expenses to eliminate stranded costs and transaction expenses.

© 2015 Prospect News.
All content on this website is protected by copyright law in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the use of the person downloading only.
Redistribution and copying are prohibited by law without written permission in advance from Prospect News.
Redistribution or copying includes e-mailing, printing multiple copies or any other form of reproduction.