(The following statement was released by the rating agency)
Nov 06 - Standard & Poor's Ratings Services has published an article comparing the profiles
of five companies it rates that could fall under the umbrella term, sovereign wealth fund (SWF).
Two of these companies, International Petroleum Investment Co. and Mubadala
Development Co. are based in the United Arab Emirates. We include Singapore's Temasek
Holdings (Private) Ltd., Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Co., and Kazakhstan's
Samruk-Kazyna, although we consider them to be government-owned investment or
holding companies. We have excluded public pension funds and investment funds
linked to central banks.
The article, published Nov. 5, titled "Government Backing Keeps Ratings On
SWFs And State-Owned Investment Holding Companies Steady," looks at the
stand-alone profiles of the five entities and the criteria Standard & Poor's
uses to assess them. Several SWFs have been diversifying internationally and
into more commercially viable investments. These changes could improve the
companies' stand-alone credit profiles, but also affect their roles for the
governments that created them.
In addition, deteriorating economic conditions and sizable debt have hurt some
companies' performance. Nevertheless, our outlook for the sector remains
stable because of our view of an extremely high or almost certain likelihood
of government support for those companies.