“Megadeals from Apple Inc. and from Oracle Corp., which just completed a $10 billion bond sale on Monday, helped push the number of debt sales by highly rated companies in the U.S. to record levels in the first half of the year,” Mike Cherney reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“These companies sold about $642 billion of debt, according to data provider Dealogic, which has records going back to 1995,” Cherney reports. “That is more than the $560 billion sold in the first half of last year and outstrips the previous record set in 2009, when $612 billion of bonds was sold.”
“Apple’s $12 billion bond sale in April was the largest U.S. investment-grade offering in the first half of this year,” Cherney reports. “In April 2013, the technology giant sold $17 billion in debt, which at the time was the largest corporate bond deal on record.”
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