Banks are looking to sell $2.25 billion of term loans and $2 billion equivalent of bonds for Boots, to help finance its acquisition by US private equity firm Sycamore Partners, according to people familiar with the matter.

Companies are launching a number of debt deals designed to pay out a dividend to their private equity owners, at a time when buyout firms are under pressure to return money to clients.

Investors are fretting that a year-long rally in global credit is papering over the risk that US policy uncertainty tips the world’s largest economy into a recession.

First the private credit firms came for the banking industry’s lucrative corporate loan business. Now they’re grabbing a chunk of their consumer-lending work. The pressing question for this thriving multi-trillion dollar industry is whether it has timed its latest incursion badly.

A surge in issuance of a type of bond that can convert into stock on maturity is helping revive a hedge fund strategy that was crushed during the financial crisis.

They’re the gilded class of high finance, whose shrewd bets and jumbo-sized paydays are the envy of Wall Street.

Some of the world’s biggest asset managers are buying up European corporate bonds — seeing the region as a safer bet as turmoil engulfs US regional banks.

The equity-linked debt of some of the pandemic’s darlings has plunged to record lows and is now considered distressed.