Verizon issued the debt in five parts, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private details. The longest portion of the deal, a 40-year bond, yields 1.3 percentage points above Treasuries after initial price discussions of 1.6 percentage points, the person added.

Verizon’s bond offering follows Meta Platforms Inc.’s $30 billion deal last month, the biggest public offering since 2023, and a $25 billion sale from Google parent Alphabet Inc. in US dollars and euros last week.

Those deals helped propel global bond sales to a record of about $6 trillion for the year, according to Bloomberg-compiled data. Verizon’s $49 billion deal in 2013 remains the market’s biggest-ever corporate bond deal, the data show.

The new issuance comes on the heels of an announcement that the company would pursue an aggressive new strategy after it shed 7,000 subscribers in the third quarter.

“We are going to take bold and fiscally responsible action to redefine Verizon’s trajectory at this critical inflection point for our company,” Chief Executive Officer Dan Schulman said in a statement last month. The former chief executive of PayPal Holdings Inc. was appointed in October to replace Hans Vestberg after the company lost market share to competitors and faced down a lagging stock price.

Vestberg, who pioneered Verizon’s adoption of 5G technology, led the company’s acquisition of Frontier last year in a deal intended to grow Verizon’s fiber-optic footprint across regions where its presence is smaller.

Verizon lined up $10 billion of short-term bank funding to help fund its purchase of Frontier in 2024, Bloomberg previously reported. The Federal Communications Commission approved the deal earlier this year, paving the way for an expansion of the company’s high-speed internet business.

Bridge loans provided by banks to finance acquisitions are typically replaced with permanent funding, such as bonds sold to institutional investors.