FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany's Merck (DE:MRCG) aims to quickly repay the up to $5 billion (£3.3 billion) in bank loans it needed to fund the $17 billion acquisition of U.S. lab supplies company Sigma-Aldrich (O:SIAL), its finance chief told daily Boersen-Zeitung.
"We want to reduce the loans very aggressively within two to three years to stabilise our credit rating and to regain financial leeway for further acquisitions," Marcus Kuhnert told the paper in an interview published on Saturday.
The German drugs and chemicals maker is funding the biggest takeover in its history from about $2 billion to $3 billion in cash and the issue of new debt securities. It plans to close the deal in the middle of this year.
Kuhnert said that after the deal, net debt would be more than three times its earnings before interest, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) at 12 billion euros ($13 billion) and that Merck wanted to improve the ratio as soon as possible.
He said he wanted the ratio lower than two times EBITDA by the end of 2017. "Then we can talk about smaller and mid-sized acquisitions again," Kuhnert said.