Morgan Stanley has begun marketing debt to finance the acquisition of Baldwin Insurance Group by DFO Management, Michael Dell’s family office, and Sequence Holdings. The syndicated package is 2.3 billion dollars, comprising a 2 billion dollar seven year term loan and a 300 million dollar seven year delayed draw term loan. A further 750 million dollars of second lien secured debt is being placed privately, and is not part of the 2.3 billion dollar syndicated total.
Early price talk is about 3.5 percentage points over the floating benchmark rate, with the term loan offered at 99 cents on the dollar. A lender call was scheduled for November 4 and commitments are due by November 12. Morgan Stanley also advised the buyers on the acquisition.
DFO and Sequence agreed on September 14 to buy the Tampa based insurance broker for 32.50 dollars a share in cash. That values Baldwin’s equity at about 4.6 billion dollars, and the transaction at about 7.7 billion dollars including about 3.1 billion dollars of net debt that will be assumed or refinanced. Conflating those two figures would overstate the equity cheque by two thirds. The merger is not conditional on financing, and still requires shareholder and regulatory approvals, with closing expected in the first quarter of 2027.
The financing matters as a market signal. A family office, not a sponsor fund, is the lead buyer of a large public insurance platform, and the loan market is being asked to fund it at a spread that will show, when commitments close, how much risk appetite remains for leveraged insurance distribution.