S&P Puts Co-operators General Insurance on Watch Neg.Business Editors TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Standard & Poor's Oct. 3, 2002-- Standard & Poor's Ratings Services Ratings Service A company, such as Moody's or Standard & Poor's, that rates various debt and preferred stock issues for safety of payment of principal, interest, or dividends. said today that it placed its triple-'B' counterparty credit and financial strength ratings on Guelph, Ont.-based Co-operators General Insurance Co. (CGIC CGIC Clinical Global Impression of Change CGIC Credit Guarantee Insurance Corporation (South Africa) CGIC Co-operators General Insurance Company CGIC Capital Guaranty Insurance Company CGIC Canadian Geoscience Information Center ) on CreditWatch with negative implications. "The CreditWatch placement reflects Standard & Poor's heightened concerns that CGIC will not meet the minimum financial targets set out for the company to maintain its ratings," said Standard & Poor's credit analyst Donald Chu. These targets would include achieving a preferred dividend coverage ratio Preferred Dividend Coverage Ratio A coverage ratio that measures a company's ability to pay off its required preferred dividend payments. A healthy company will have a high coverage ratio, indicating that it has little difficulty in paying off its preferred dividend requirements. of at least 3.0 times, and a combined ratio of 108% or better for 2002. This reflects the difficult operating environment In computing, an operating environment is the environment in which users run programs, whether in a command line interface, such as in MS-DOS or the Unix shell, or in a graphical user interface, such as in the Macintosh operating system. that continues to be experienced by the Canadian property and casualty insurance industry and the challenging investment environment that has resulted from the downturn in the credit and global equity markets. The outlook on CGIC had been negative. This CreditWatch placement is expected to be resolved by early November 2002, and is not expected to result in more than a one-notch downgrade Downgrade A negative change in the rating of a security. Notes: For example, an analyst may downgrade a stock from strong buy to buy, or a bond rating agency may downgrade a bond from AAA to AA. of the rating. There is a possibility that the outlook will remain negative, considering the very challenging industry, investment, and macro-economic environment to which the company is currently exposed. A complete list of the ratings is available to RatingsDirect subscribers at www.ratingsdirect.com, as well as on Standard & Poor's public Web site at wwwstandardandpoors.com under Ratings Actions/Newly Released Ratings. ANALYTICAL E-MAIL ADDRESSES See Internet address. e-mail address - electronic mail address : donald_chu@standardandpoors.com kevin_maher_standardandpoors.com canadian_ratings@standardandpoors.com Copyright 2002, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services |
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