S&P Valuation and Risk Strategies Enhances Relative Credit Health Assessment Solution for Rated and Un-Rated Public Companies

NEW YORK, May 23, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- S&P Valuation and Risk Strategies today announced the launch of the enhanced Credit Health Panel, an upgraded credit evaluation solution on its Global Credit Portal® investor analytics platform.  The Credit Health Panel is designed to give a dashboard view of the credit health of a corporate entity relative to a broad and customizable set of entity peers.  It is a key to navigating the uncertainty of the un-rated universe and helping organizations to rapidly assess and manage the risks associated with their corporate counterparties.  Powered by Standard & Poor's analytics and Capital IQ, leading providers of data and analytics for global financial professionals, the Credit Health Panel facilitates relative and directional credit risk analysis.

Meeting a broad set of market needs, including those of commercial lending, asset management, corporate treasury, credit insurers and capital market advice professionals, the updated Credit Health Panel provides a rapid way of assessing the relative credit quality of over 28,000 rated and un-rated public companies, using standardized data across developed and emerging geographies, as well as multiple accounting practices and currencies.

Now with expanded functionality, the Credit Health Panel allows for extensive, peer-to-peer counterparty and portfolio risk analysis, tracking corporate credit health in terms of income, operational and liquidity relative strength measures.  New features include the ability to create and manage custom groups of listed counterparties, tracking as many as 25 different groups with as many as 100 companies in each, and an advanced search process that can screen by geography, sector, and Standard & Poor's rating, in addition to 33 other financial metrics.

"Based upon the feedback of our clients, the expanded features of the Credit Health Panel now analyze over 33 key business metrics in order to give to our clients a robust, quantitative view of credit health vs. a customized peer group, facilitating the rapid and efficient review of entities from multiple angles (sector, geography and credit quality)," said Silvina Aldeco-Martinez, Global Product Manager.  "By adding advanced search features and side-by-side group comparisons, we've made it possible for our clients to conduct a level of relative credit analysis in minutes that would have previously been cost- and time-prohibitive for even the most sophisticated credit analysts."

Among the key features of Credit Health Panel are the following:

• Overall Credit Health Score: A quantitative analysis of an entity's cash generation capabilities, operational risks and relative financial strength.

• Individual Liquidity, Income and Operational panel scores: Quantitatively derived relative measures of key financial strengths attributes including detailed current and historical comparison with user-defined peers, and industry averages.

• Probability of Default Score: A daily updated estimate that uses fundamentals and equity market factors that allow users to view market sentiment on potential changes in credit quality in between reporting periods.

• CreditModel® Score: A forward-looking, quantitatively-derived credit assessment that allows for the comparison of un-rated entities on a single, familiar, and industry-accepted letter grade standard scale.

• Global Industry Classification: Expanded search functionality allows users to create custom peer groups or utilized pre-configured industry peer groups to refine and contextualize analysis.

• Heat Maps Support Easy Monitoring: Color coded scores facilitate rapid identification of a company's performance. Users can monitor groups with real-time scoring updates on the dashboard with the ability export to excel.

The Credit Health Panel is available to S&P customers worldwide through the S&P Global Credit Portal. www.standardandpoors.com/ratingsdirect

About Standard & Poor's

Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC, a subsidiary of The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP), is the world's foremost provider of independent credit ratings, indices, risk evaluation, investment research and data. With offices in 23 countries and markets, Standard & Poor's is an essential part of the world's financial infrastructure and has played a leading role for over 150 years in providing investors with the independent benchmarks they need to feel more confident about their investment and financial decisions. For more information, visit www.standardandpoors.com.

Media Contact:
Michael Privitera
Standard & Poor's Communications
212-438-6679
[email protected]

SOURCE Standard & Poor's