Buyout Firm H.I.G. Seeks $655 Million of Private Debt for USA DeBusk Deal

(Bloomberg) -- Buyout firm H.I.G. Capital is seeking $655 million of debt financing to help fund its potential purchase of mechanical and industrial cleaning company USA DeBusk, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s asset management division and Sixth Street Partners are leading the financing, which includes a $435 million term loan, $160 million delayed draw term loan and a $60 million revolver, said the people, asking not to be identified discussing a private transaction.

The term loan pays interest of about 5.25 percentage points over the Secured Overnight Financing Rate, the people said. That’s about 1 percentage point less than the rate on the company’s current loan, where different portions pay 6 percentage points or 6.5 percentage points more than the benchmark rate, according to a Dec. 31 filing from one of USA DeBusk’s existing lenders.

Representatives for Goldman Sachs, Sixth Street, H.I.G. and USA DeBusk declined to comment.

Direct lenders have been making a bigger push into energy and infrastructure financing traditionally dominated by banks. Some of the biggest names in the $1.7 trillion private credit market — including BlackRock Inc., Blackstone Inc. and Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. — are raising billions of dollars in a bid to profit from financing projects like clean energy.

Banks and direct lenders are working on competing financing packages worth as much as €650 million to refinance the debt of Dutch testing services firm Normec. Golub Capital led a unitranche of about $2.3 billion to Enverus, a data and analytics provider for the energy and power industries.

Deer Park, Texas-based USA DeBusk was formed in 2012 and has completed a number of add-on acquisitions since then.