DBRS Confirms Guaranteed Debt of National Asset Management Limited; at A (low); Trend Negative

DBRS, Inc. (DBRS) today confirmed the A (low) Guaranteed Senior Unsecured Debt rating and R-1 (low) Short-Term Guaranteed Senior Unsecured Debt rating of the National Asset Management Limited (NAML or the Group). The trend on the long-term ratings is Negative while the trend on the short-term ratings is Stable. This rating action follows DBRS’s confirmation of the A (low) rating of the Republic of Ireland with a Negative trend on 21 November 2012.

National Asset Management Limited is a special purpose vehicle set up by Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) and is responsible for issuing government guaranteed debt instruments for the purposes of acquiring eligible bank assets. National Asset Management Limited is a wholly-owned subsidiary of National Asset Management Agency Investment Limited, which is 51% owned by private investors and 49% owned by NAMA. For 1H12, NAML reported a net profit after tax of EUR 222 million despite absorbing an impairment charge of EUR 129 million. Importantly, as of 30 June 2012, NAMA had repaid EUR 3.25 billion of the guaranteed bonds. As a result, NAML had EUR 27.0 billion of NAMA Guaranteed Floating Rate Notes and EUR 1.6 billion of NAMA Callable Perpetual Subordinated Bonds outstanding.

Notes:
All figures are in EUR 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 company documents and DBRS ratings of the Republic of Ireland. DBRS considers the information available to it for the purposes of providing this rating was of satisfactory quality.

This rating is endorsed by DBRS Ratings Limited for use in the European Union.

Lead Analyst: Roger Lister
Rating Committee Chair: Alan Reid
Initial Rating Date: 21 April 2011
Most Recent Rating Update: 9 August 2012

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