NEW YORK, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Banks are ending efforts
to sell to investors $3.9 billion worth of debt that backed
Apollo Global Management Inc's deal to buy some assets
of telecommunications company Lumen Technologies Inc,
people familiar with the matter said.
A consortium of banks led by Bank of America Corp
and Barclays Plc are poised to cancel the syndication
of the $2 billion leveraged loan and the $1.9 billion junk bond
after the transaction failed to generate enough orders from
investors, the source said.
Apollo bought assets and operations of Los Angeles-based
Lumen Technologies in 20 states for $7.5 billion, including
debt, and rebranded the acquisition as Brightspeed.
Brightspeed and the banks declined to comment. Apollo did not
respond to a request for comment.
The botched debt syndication is the latest sign that banks
are struggling to offload billions of dollars worth of
junk-rated debt from their books owing to current market
volatility.
Last week, Wall Street banks, including Bank of America,
Credit Suisse Group AG and Goldman Sachs Group Inc
, suffered a $700 million loss in the sale of about $4.55
billion in debt backing the leveraged buyout of business
software company Citrix Systems Inc.
(Reporting by Matt Tracy in Washington, D.C and Abigail
Summerville in New York; Writing by Chibuike Oguh in New York;
Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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