...Toronto (Standard & Poor's) March 10, 2015--Standard & Poor's Ratings Services today assigned its 'A-' issue-level ratings to Warsaw, Ind.-based orthopedic products maker Zimmer Holdings Inc.'s proposed roughly $7.6 billion senior unsecured notes offering, to be issued in several tranches, and placed these ratings on CreditWatch with negative implications. The company plans to use the proceeds from the offering to fund its acquisition of Biomet Inc. (B+/Watch Pos/--), which is scheduled to close in coming weeks. The 'A-' corporate credit rating on Zimmer remains on CreditWatch with negative implications. We expect to lower the corporate credit rating on Zimmer and the issue-level ratings on the senior unsecured debt to '###' at the close of the acquisition, stemming from the largely debt-financed nature of the acquisition. We expect the outlook to be stable. Post-acquisition, the '###' ratings would reflect our assessment of the business risk as "strong" (improved from "satisfactory") and...
