...+ Lifesciences company Danaher Corp. announced its planned acquisition of General Electric Co.'s (GE) biopharma business (GE Biopharma) for roughly $21 billion cash and an assumption of roughly $0.4 billion in pension liabilities. We believe the acquisition is highly complementary to Danaher's position in the attractive and growing bioprocess development and manufacturing business, and GE Biopharma will add roughly $3.2 billion in sales, growing Danaher's lifescience business by roughly 50%. + Danaher plans to fund the acquisition with a mix of cash, debt, and $3 billion in proceeds from an equity offering. We expect the acquisition to result in leverage increasing to over 4x (from 2.5x today), though we think Danaher will delever to under 3x within two years of the deal closing. + On Feb. 25, 2019, S&P Global Ratings placed all its ratings on the company, including the 'A' issuer credit and senior unsecured ratings and the 'A-1' short-term credit and commercial paper ratings, on CreditWatch...
