Manulife issues US$1.75B of senior notes in the United States

On March 4, 2016, Manulife Financial Corporation (Manulife) completed a public offering in the United States of US$1.75 billion aggregate principal amount of two series of its senior notes consisting of US$1.0 billion aggregate principal amount of 4.150 per cent senior notes due 2026 and US$750 million aggregate principal amount of 5.375 per cent senior notes due 2046.

Citigroup Global Markets Inc. and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC acted as joint book-running managers for the offering and led the syndicate of underwriters which also included Goldman, Sachs & Co., Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Barclays Capital Inc., BNP Paribas Securities Corp., ANZ Securities, Inc., HSBC Securities (USA) Inc., Mitsubishi UFJ Securities (USA), Inc., SMBC Nikko Securities America, Inc. and Standard Chartered Bank.

The Notes were issued under a prospectus supplement dated March 1, 2016, to Manulife’s short form base shelf prospectus dated December 17, 2015.

Manulife was represented by an in-house team led by Stephen Sigurdson, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, and Cameron MacDonald, Assistant Vice President, Corporate & Divisional Law.

Alan Paley, Peter Loughran, Nicholas Pellicani, Katie Hermann, Ashwin Phadnis and Ben Strumeier (corporate/securities), Michael Bolotin and Mike Layfield (tax) from Debevoise & Plimpton LLP; and David Seville, Jonathan Cescon, David Leith and Isabella Ssozi (corporate/securities), Jerald Wortsman and Catrina Card (tax) from Torys LLP provided external support to Manulife Financial.

The underwriters were represented by Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. The Paul, Weiss team included Christopher Cummings, Christian Kurtz, Rebecca Vasluianu and Aaron Abramson (corporate/securities) and David Mayo and Amir Cooper (tax).