Scope Ratings’ corporate ratings team provides expert corporate credit assessment across Europe. Scope rates more than 200 companies – including components of the CAC-40, DAX-40, STOXX and iBoxx indexes - and more than 1,300 corporate bonds. We offer issuers and research rooted in a European perspective on corporate performance which pays close attention to regional differences.
Rating overview
Scope’s corporate rating methodologies – modular, flexible and opinion-driven - allow us to strike an appropriate balance between analytical consistency and issuer-specific characteristics of European companies, notably regarding corporate structures, pensions, cash management and ownership and owners’ business philosophy.
We analyse diversified companies by looking at the drivers for each represented industry and the competitive position of each business to reflect the whole corporate structure, not just the biggest division. US companies tend to be less diversified than European ones.
We treat pensions differently from financial debt, diminishing the dependence of credit metrics on volatile discount rates and making rating changes less sensitive to mechanical inputs.
We regard cash liquidity as a distinct ratings driver, in that sustainable excess liquidity can have a positive impact on ratings.
We recognise that corporate owners’ business philosophies differ from country to country, with the high proportion of family-owned companies in France, Germany and Italy, for example, contributing to longer-term investment horizons.
Our coverage of non-financial corporates currently focuses on a dozen sectors: airlines, automobiles, capital goods, chemicals, consumer goods, healthcare, integrated oil and gas, metals and mining, real estate, retailing, telecommunications, utilities. Our research includes in-depth yearly outlooks on these sectors and updates, when relevant, in addition to regular additional research, aimed at providing deeper insights on specific topics, and shorter commentaries to inform markets about the credit implications of latest corporate developments.
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