Short-Term Debt
Assigned to obligors and to debt instruments having an original maturity of 365 days or less, it evaluates the likelihood of timely repayment of interest and principal of all outstanding short-term debt obligations.
Long-Term Debt
Assigned to obligors and to debt instruments having an original maturity of more than 365 days, it evaluates the likelihood of timely repayment of interest and principal of all outstanding long-term debt obligations.
Corporate Bonds
Assigned to specific bond obligations, it analyzes the business and financial risk characteristics and prospects of the obligor, as well as specific features of the bond issue in terms of priority, security, protective covenants, etc. The rating assigned evaluates the likelihood of timely repayment of interest and principal of a specific long-term debt obligation.
Counterparty risk rating
Evaluates the risk management, operational capacity, financial structure, and management efficiency, usually of a financial institution. It focuses on the risk assumed by customers in their commercial relations with the enterprise. It represents an opinion of the obligor's overall capacity to meet its financial obligations.
Securitizations
Often involves a project or a program structured as a special purpose vehicle (SPV) that may borrow funds. In such financings the lenders typically look only or primarily to the dedicated assets to generate the cash flows that are the source of principal and interest payments, and sometimes investment returns, without recourse to others.
Bonds from Public Sector and Territorial Entities
Ratings of debt issues by companies belonging to the public sector take into account the socio-economic characteristics of their influence area, as well as actual and potential support and/or political influence by other governmental entities.
Investment Funds
Evaluates a fund's safety level through an estimation of its capacity to preserve capital value and to achieve benchmark returns. Credit and market risk performance and policies are analyzed. Administrative and operational risk management and control is also closely evaluated.
Quality of Portfolio Management:
Represents an opinion about the company's ability to manage investments for third parties. For this purpose, the strength of its organizational structure, the appropriateness of its strategic plans, its investment decision-making process, and the tools and methodologies used to evaluate and mitigate the risks associated to this activity are analyzed.
Effectiveness of portfolio management
Represents an opinion about the consistency of the portfolio investment policies and the quality of investment returns achieved in absolute terms, adjusted for risk, and relative to relevant benchmarks. Portfolios with investment and management policies well defined and applied as a result of disciplined internal control processes are more likely to achieve, over time, higher risk-adjusted returns than the market's average.
