A lender group led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. is preparing to raise $5.3 billion of debt to support Qualtrics International Inc.'s purchase of health-care survey firm Press Ganey Forsta, according to people familiar with the matter.
The package is expected to comprise a $3.3 billion leveraged loan issued in US dollars and euros, while another $2 billion could be sold in the high-yield bond market or to private credit firms, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss private deliberations. A deal could launch in March, they added. Proceeds will also refinance about $1.8 billion in Press Ganey's debt, the people said.
Representatives for JPMorgan and Press Ganey declined to comment. Representatives for Qualtrics and its owner Silver Lake Management didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The group of lenders is looking to raise cash as wary investors try to assess how new artificial intelligence models could disrupt the software sector. Qualtrics, which makes online survey tools, agreed in October to buy Press Ganey in a deal valued at $6.75 billion.
Many asset managers are exposed to loans for numerous software companies, and they've been parsing through their holdings to determine which firms are especially vulnerable to the emergence of AI.
Talks of Qualtrics' debt deal come a week after direct lenders provided loans for two other software companies -- Clearwater Analytics Holdings Inc. and OneStream Inc. -- that are being acquired by private equity firms.
The US Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump's sweeping global tariffs, undercutting his signature economic policy and delivering his biggest legal defeat since he returned to the White House.
Voting 6-3, the court said Trump exceeded his authority by invoking a federal emergency-powers law to impose his "reciprocal" tariffs across the globe as well as targeted import taxes the administration says address fentanyl trafficking.
The justices didn't address the extent to which importers are entitled to refunds, leaving it to a lower court to sort out those issues. If fully allowed, refunds could total as much as $170 billion - more than half the total revenue Trump's tariffs have brought in.
The White House has said it will quickly replace the levies using other legal tools, though the fall-back options tend to be either more cumbersome or more limited than the wide-ranging powers Trump asserted under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
Stocks rose on news of the decision given investors previously fretted tariffs would hurt the outlook for economic growth and company earnings. Treasuries extended declines with yields rising broadly and the rate on the benchmark 10-year note climbing to 4.10% as investors priced in the likelihood of lower tax revenues. A Bloomberg gauge of the dollar fell as much as 0.2% before erasing the drop.
The decision invalidates Trump's April 2 "Liberation Day" tariffs, which put levies of 10-50% on imports from most countries. It also scuttles duties he imposed on goods from Canada, Mexico and China in the name of addressing fentanyl trafficking, and it casts doubt on separate IEEPA tariffs placed on goods from Brazil and India for various reasons.
The ruling strikes at the heart of Trump's agenda, blunting an all-purpose cudgel he has enthusiastically wielded against trading partners. Trump this month set up a process to impose tariffs as high as 25% on goods from countries doing business with Iran. He previously threatened to impose tariffs on European countries resisting his attempt to take over Greenland.
The decision could cut the US average effective tariff rate by more than half. A Bloomberg Economics analysis before the ruling concluded that a broad decision against Trump would reduce the rate from 13.6% to 6.5%, a level not seen since March. Trump's tariffs on steel, aluminum and automobiles were put in place under a different law, so are not directly affected.
The ruling hit while Trump was in a closed-door meeting with a bipartisan group of governors. The president's initial reaction was to label the decision a "disgrace" and vow to implement a backup plan, according to a person familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to describe the closed-door event. The White House and US Trade Representative haven't yet responded to requests for comment. Trump has called tariffs "my favorite word" and vowed they will "make us rich as hell."
When the opinion was released, Asia was asleep and Europe was headed into the evening and a weekend, so the full scale of the worldwide response and markets reaction will be felt in coming days. Few officials wanted to appear to be gloating. A UK official noted that the ruling focuses only on one prong of Trump's trade policy. The head of Germany's chamber of commerce called for "cool heads."
The high court majority said the 1977 law doesn't authorize tariffs. IEEPA, as the law is known, gives the president a panoply of tools to address national security, foreign policy and economic emergencies but doesn't explicitly mention tariffs or taxes.
"When Congress grants the power to impose tariffs, it does so clearly and with careful constraints," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court's majority opinion. "It did neither here."
Two Trump appointees -- Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett -- joined Roberts and the court's three liberals in the majority, though the group splintered on some parts of the reasoning.
Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. Kavanaugh wrote for the group that IEEPA "clearly authorizes the president to impose tariffs." He added that the ruling "might not prevent presidents from imposing most if not all of these same sorts of tariffs under other statutory authorities."
Kavanaugh said the refund process was "likely to be a 'mess,' as was acknowledged at oral argument."
The conservative-dominated Supreme Court until now had largely supported Trump's sweeping assertions of presidential power in his second term, siding with him in a torrent of emergency orders that let him implement policies temporarily. The tariff decision is the court's first full-scale ruling on Trump's far-reaching initiatives.
"This is a win for the wallets of every American consumer," Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement. "Trump's chaotic and illegal tariff tax made life more expensive and our economy more unstable. Families paid more. Small businesses and farmers got squeezed. Markets swung wildly."
The tariffs were challenged in two lawsuits filed by small businesses that included Chicago-area toymaker Learning Resources Inc., along with a third case pressed by 12 Democratic state attorneys general. All three lower courts to rule in the cases declared the tariffs to be unlawful, though the decisions were put on hold during the Supreme Court review.
"The Supreme Court upheld the foundational separation-of-powers principle that our small-business client has been fighting for: No president has boundless power to tax Americans," said Pratik Shah, the lead lawyer in the case for Learning Resources.
The case is Learning Resources v. Trump, 24-1287.