Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) this week wrapped its $15 billion-equivalent cross-border term loan B financing, a record-setting deal for transaction size in the leveraged loan market.
WBD goes into the record books as the second-largest TLB syndication of all time, trailing only the $16.45 billion TXU deal in 2007. For additional context, there have only been three USD institutional loan deals ever totaling $10 billion or more, and two of those were before the Global Financial Crisis. That makes WBD the largest TLB transaction post-GFC, both by the $15 billion total facility size and by the $13 billion US dollar tranche size, topping Broadcom’s November 2015 deal at $10.74 billion across US and European facilities ($9.75 billion in USD). It is also the largest loan ever issued by a non-sponsored borrower.
Final tranche sizes for WBD were $13 billion for the US dollar-denominated TLB and €1.717 billion for the euro loan. Final pricing for the seven-year term loans came tight to talk for both spread and OID at S/E+250 with a 99.75 OID. Guidance at launch was S/E+275-300 at 99. Proceeds will be used to refinance a bridge loan the company obtained last year, ahead of the closing of its acquisition by Paramount Skydance Corp.
Emergence of the deal came amid a dry season for new M&A supply and is thus contorting volume figures by its sheer size. Consider that the total institutional loan supply in the US from LBO and M&A transactions in May was $17.7 billion (as of May 27), roughly in line with March, with WBD accounting for 73%. Corporate M&A volume jumped to $15.1 billion in May, more than the combined total of January-April, and marking the highest monthly figure since January 2020.
Not only did this deal from a debut issuer offer fresh supply to a starved market — indeed, it was upsized from the $5 billion and €1 billion tranche sizes at the initial launch — it came as investors are leaning into higher-quality borrowers. As of May 26, 63% of loans from BB- rated borrowers in the Morningstar LSTA US Leveraged Loan Index were priced at par or higher. That share was at a 2026 high of 76% earlier in May after falling as low as 13% in late March and early April.
Despite the dearth of acquisition-related issuance, the market has staged a comeback, led by higher-quality names, from a challenging period earlier this year. For B+ and B issuers, current shares of loans priced at par and above are 48% and 40%, both up from single digits in early March, while B- borrowers lag at 16% (up from 2% on March 2). Companies have taken advantage of the conditions via a wave of refinancing and repricing deals in recent weeks. Speculative-grade borrowers have repriced $50.5 billion of term loans in May, up from just $11.8 billion in February through April combined, with companies rated BB- accounting for 51% of that volume.
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