Sources: Uber has hired Morgan Stanley, Barclays PLC to sell a leveraged loan of $1B-$2B to institutional investors
Context & Ripple Effects
This story marks Uber's graduation from bank credit lines to institutional debt markets. A year earlier it was negotiating a $1 billion credit facility with banks — quickly upsized to $2 billion as more banks wanted in — alongside plans for an equity raise valuing the company at $50 billion or higher. Hiring Morgan Stanley and Barclays to arrange a $1B-$2B leveraged loan means Uber now wants non-bank institutional money, not just committed bank lines.
The timing matters because this is the first tranche of what became a repeat program: weeks later Uber closed its first leveraged loan at about $1.15B and a roughly 5% yield, and by 2018 it was back for a second one — approaching loan investors directly instead of going through banks.
First-order effects
- Morgan Stanley and Barclays win a marquee tech mandate as lead arrangers, earning fees on a $1B-$2B placement to institutional loan investors.
- Uber gains access to as much as $2 billion of debt without issuing new equity against its reported $50B-plus valuation.
Second-order effects
- A clean execution sets the template Uber reused twice: the ~$1.15B first loan at ~5%, then a $1.25B second loan in 2018 marketed directly to investors, cutting the arranger banks out of the economics.
- Institutional loan investors gain a new large-cap private-tech credit to underwrite, expanding the buyer base beyond traditional syndicated-loan names.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, venture-backed companies build leveraged loans into their capital structure as a standing alternative to dilutive equity raises — and repeat issuers who know the investor base progressively disintermediate the arranger banks, shifting the fee pool toward whoever owns the investor relationship.
The trend: High-growth private companies are layering leveraged debt onto venture-funded balance sheets, with successful repeat issuers increasingly bypassing the banks that arranged their debut deals.