Samsonite International S.A. (Samsonite) and Tumi Holdings Inc. (Tumi) announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement whereby a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsonite will acquire 100% of Tumi for roughly $1.8 billion. We are assigning a 'BB' corporate credit rating to Luxembourg-based Samsonite International S.A., the parent company of the group. We are assigning 'BBB-' issue-level ratings to the group's proposed $2.425 billion senior secured credit facilities. The recovery ratings are '1', indicating our expectations for very high recovery in the event of a payment default. The stable outlook reflects our expectation that the company will effectively integrate Tumi while maintaining debt leverage below 4x during the next 12 months. On April 4, 2016, Standard&Poor's
