DBRS Assigns Preferred Stock Rating of BB (high), Stable Trend to KeyCorp

DBRS, Inc. (DBRS) has today assigned a rating of BB (high) with a Stable trend to KeyCorp’s (Key or the Company) preferred stock, including the recent $525 million of Fixed-to-Floating Rate Perpetual Non-Cumulative Preferred Stock, Series D issuance. The ratings are positioned three notches below Key’s Issuer & Senior Debt rating of BBB (high), which also carries a Stable trend. This notching is consistent with DBRS’s base notching policy for preferred shares issued for BBB (high) rated entities.

Key expects to use the net proceeds from the sale of the preferred stock for general corporate purposes, which may include repurchases of common stock among other potential uses.

Notes:
All figures are in USD unless otherwise noted.

The applicable methodologies are Global Methodology for Rating Banks and Banking Organisations (July 2016), DBRS Criteria – Support Assessments for Banks and Banking Organisations (March 2016) and DBRS Criteria: Rating Bank Capital Securities – Subordinated, Hybrid, Preferred & Contingent Capital Securities (February 2016), which can be found on our website under 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.

Lead Analyst: John Mackerey
Rating Committee Chair: William Schwartz
Initial Rating Date: 25 April 2003
Most Recent Rating Update: 30 October 2015

The rated entity or its related entities did participate in the rating process. DBRS had access to the accounts and other relevant internal documents of the rated entity or its related entities.