Darmstadt, Germany – Merck, a leading company for innovative, topquality high-tech products in healthcare, life science and performance materials, successfully placed euro bonds today via its subsidiary Merck Financial Services GmbH. This serves the financing of the proposed acquisition of the U.S. life science company Sigma-Aldrich.

In total, three tranches were placed: a floating rate note with a maturity of two years amounting to € 700 million, with a 0.23% spread over 3-month EURIBOR. In addition, two fixed rate notes with a maturity of four years (€ 800 million for 0.75%) and seven years (€ 550 million for 1.375%) were placed as well.

“This euro bond transaction completes our capital markets activities for the financing of the proposed Sigma-Aldrich acquisition. Overall, with our financing measures, we were able to approach a wide range of different investors. The success of all our bond placements clearly shows that Merck is well-positioned with its conservative financing policy,” said Marcus Kuhnert, Chief Financial Officer of Merck.

The eurobond transaction was heavily oversubscribed and achieved a well-diversified distribution among a wide range of institutional investors such as fund managers, insurance companies, pension funds, and banks. Bookrunners of the transaction were Merck’s relationship banks.

In December 2014, Merck had already issued a euro hybrid bond amounting to € 1.5 billion to finance the planned acquisition. In March 2015, Merck then placed a U.S. bond amounting to US$ 4.0 billion.

The planned acquisition of Sigma-Aldrich for approximately US$ 17 billion, which was announced in September 2014, is a key element of Merck’s “Fit for 2018” transformation and growth program. Recently, Merck announced that it had received all the antitrust clearances required for the acquisition. Merck aims to complete the transaction in the third quarter of 2015. Certain conditions stipulated by the EU Commission must still be met. According to these, Merck and Sigma-Aldrich must sell parts of Sigma-Aldrich’s solvents and inorganics business in Europe.

Merck is rated A flat (negative outlook) by Standard & Poor’s Rating Services and Baa1 (negative outlook) by Moody’s Investors Services Limited.

Merck is a leading company for innovative and top-quality high-tech products in healthcare, life science and performance materials. The company has six businesses – Merck Serono, Consumer Health, Allergopharma, Biosimilars, Merck Millipore and Performance Materials – and generated sales of € 11.3 billion in 2014. Around 39,000 employees work for Merck in 66 countries to improve the quality of life for patients, to foster the success of customers, and to help meet global challenges. Merck is the world’s oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company – since 1668, the company has stood for innovation, business success and responsible entrepreneurship. Holding an approximately 70% interest, the founding family remains the majority owner of the company to this day. Merck, Darmstadt, Germany holds the global rights to the Merck name and brand. The only exceptions are Canada and the United States, where the company operates as EMD Serono, EMD Millipore and EMD Performance Materials.