DBRS Assigns a BBB Rating to BB&T Corporation’s Preferred Stock; Trend Stable

DBRS, Inc. (DBRS) has today assigned a rating of BBB with a Stable trend to BB&T Corporation’s (BB&T or the Company) $500 million issuance (with a $75 million over-allotment option) of non-cumulative perpetual preferred stock. The ratings are positioned four notches below BB&T’s Issuer & Senior Debt rating of A (high), which also carries a Stable trend. This notching is consistent with DBRS’s base notching policy for preferred shares issued for A (high) rated entities.

BB&T expects to use the net proceeds from the sale of the preferred stock for general corporate purposes.

Headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, BB&T Corporation reported $175 billion in consolidated assets as of March 31, 2012. BB&T’s tangible common equity and Tier 1 common ratios were 7.1% and 10.0%, respectively, at the end of 1Q12 and its Tier 1 ratio was 12.7%.

Notes:
All figures are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted.

The principal applicable methodology is the Global Methodology for Rating Banks and Banking Organisations. Other methodologies used include the DBRS Criteria – Intrinsic and Support Assessments. Both can be found on the DBRS website under Methodologies.

The sources of information used for this rating include the issuer, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and SNL Financial. DBRS considers the information available to it for the purposes of providing this rating was of satisfactory quality.

Lead Analyst: Mark Nolan
Approver: Roger Lister
Initial Rating Date: 19 December 2005
Most Recent Rating Update: 23 February 2012

For additional information on this rating, please see the linking document under Related Research.