Martin Marietta Corp, has suffered a downgrading of its debt from Moody’s Investors Service Inc after the Bethesda, Maryland company announced that it was looking to make $1,000m-plus acquisitions that would be largely debt-funded. Moody’s cut the Martin Marietta Technologies unit’s guaranteed senior debt to A3 from A2 and shelf registration rating to (P) A3 from (P) A2. About $1,300m of long-term debt is affected. Martin Marietta says that it wants deals that would double its size before the current merger trend in the defence industry begins to run out later this decade. Martin Marietta says it remains interested in defence companies but also is targeting nondefense businesses closely related to its own, citing high technology businesses where the projects are large, where the customer is large meaning the government or a Fortune 500 company – and that typically involve systems engineering, the company explained.
