DBRS Confirms ICO’s Senior Unsecured Debt at A (low), Trend Changed to Stable from Negative

DBRS Inc. (DBRS) has today confirmed the ratings of the Senior Unsecured Debt issued by Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO or the Bank) at A (low) and the Short-term Debt and Deposit rating at R-1 (low). Concurrently, DBRS has changed the trend on the Senior Unsecured Debt to Stable from Negative. The trend on the Short-Term Debt and Deposit remains Stable. This rating action follows DBRS’s confirmation of the Kingdom of Spain at A (low), with the trend changed to Stable from Negative on October 10, 2014.

ICO is a credit institution by law and is considered to be a State Finance Agency of Spain. ICO benefits from an explicit, irrevocable, unconditional and direct guarantee from the Kingdom of Spain that is stated in its by-laws under the Royal Decree Act 706/1999. Hence, ICO’s Senior Unsecured Debt is backed by the explicit, unconditional, irrevocable and direct guarantee from the Kingdom of Spain (or the State). Therefore, the ratings and trend are equalised with the Long-Term and Short-Term Foreign and Local Currency ratings of the Kingdom of Spain.

Notes:
All figures are in EUR unless otherwise noted.

The principal applicable methodology is the Global Methodology for Rating Banks and Banking Organisations (June 2014). Other methodologies used include the DBRS Criteria: Support Assessment for Banks and Banking Organisations (January 2014) and DBRS Criteria: Rating Bank Capital Securities – Subordinated, Hybrid, Preferred & Contingent Capital Securities (December 2013). These can be found can be found at: http://www.dbrs.com/about/methodologies

The primary sources of information used for this rating include company documents, SNL Financial and the Bank of Spain. 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: Lisa Kwasnowski
Rating Committee Chair: Alan G. Reid
Initial Rating Date: February 25, 2013
Most Recent Rating Update: April 21, 2014

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