Dublin, Ireland-based specialty pharmaceutical company Mallinckrodt plc is acquiring Questcor Pharmaceuticals in a transaction valued at $5.6 billion. We believe the acquisition will be a modestly deleveraging event, although we note it follows very rapidly on the heels of Mallinckrodt's acquisition of Cadence Pharmaceuticals. We are affirming our corporate credit ratings and debt ratings on Mallinckrodt. The stable outlook reflects our expectation that despite incremental debt to finance this acquisition, EBITDA growth at Mallinckrodt combined with incremental Questcor EBITDA will reduce debt leverage to under 5x. On April 7, 2014, Standard&Poor's Ratings Services affirmed its 'BB-' corporate credit rating on Mallinckrodt plc. The outlook is stable. At the same time, we affirmed the 'BB+' issue-level rating assigned to
