DBRS Rates Wells Fargo & Company Optionally Exchangeable Senior Notes at AA; Trend Stable

DBRS, Inc. (DBRS) has assigned a rating of AA to three Optionally Exchangeable Senior Notes (Notes) issued by Wells Fargo & Company. These include $13.67 million 0.125% Notes due March 13, 2019, $5.0 million 0.125% Notes due February 21, 2020 and $69.0 million of 0.25% Notes due June 24, 2022. The trend on all of the Notes is Stable.

These Notes, at the option of the holder, are exchangeable into either a basket of equity securities or their cash value on the exchange notice date, at the discretion of the issuer. The ratings reflect DBRS’s determination that the offering documentation provides that the holders of the securities are contractually entitled to a 100% return of principal if held to maturity, or redeemed by the issuer. As such, the securities are ratable as outlined in DBRS Criteria: Rating Market-Linked Securities.

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 (June 2015). Other applicable methodologies include the DBRS Criteria: Rating Market-Linked Securities (April 2015).
These can be found at: http://www.dbrs.com/about/methodologies.

The primary sources of information used for this rating include company documents and SNL Financial. 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: John Mackerey
Rating Committee Chair: Roger Lister
Initial Rating Date: 10 December 1999
Most Recent Rating Update: 24 June 2015

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