credit ratings, investment protection Global Investment Advisors, Inc. We Optimize Your Ratings
investment advisors, credit rating protection GIA, Inc., Enhancing and Protecting your Credit Ratings
 
Sovereign Borrowers

Sovereign Borrowers

Because of the rating agencies’ power in the financial markets and the minimal amount of time most issuers spend on managing the ratings process, sovereigns and other issuers tend to be at a natural disadvantage vis-à-vis the agencies. This holds true for national governments, provincial and state governments, and municipal authorities.

To optimize their ratings, governments at all levels need to become proactive, stay abreast of ratings developments, and prepare properly for due diligence meetings. To do this effectively requires the assistance of external expertise.

That’s where GIA comes in!

Clients Around The World
Since 1991 GIA has worked with sovereign clients in Austral-Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Russia, the Baltics and Balkans, South America and North America. We have an excellent record of success — helping four clients earn upgrades, helping two clients avoid downgrades, and helping all of them improve their awareness of, and relations with, the global rating agencies. We will gladly provide references.

GIA SERVICES FOR SOVEREIGNS

  • Determining What You Need … and the Timing
    • Assistance in determining what type of rating is needed to address your goals 
    • Assistance in choosing the right agency or agencies for the desired rating type 
  • Understanding the Rating Process
    • Rating agency objectives and motives:  They differ uniquely from yours
    • Rating agency concerns:  How to identify and address them
    • Qualitative analysis:  Political risks and quality of government management
    • How the agencies’ subjective views affect your rating — and how to deal with it
    • Quantitative analysis:  Key credit quality measurements and ratios
  • Preparing for an Agency Due Diligence Visit
    • Setting the agenda and designing the presentation—what the agencies need 
    • Critique of your presentation materials; explaining what the agencies really want
    • Questions the agencies will likely ask you—and the best answers
    • Developing counter-arguments to their negative views and concerns
    • Onsite training and coaching; revealing agency practices and biases and assumptions
    • Strategies and tactics in agency meetings, with rehearsals as needed
    • Relieving management of the burden of preparing and managing ratings
  • Raising and Protecting your Ratings
    • Essential steps to raising your long-term and short-term ratings
    • The constraints to an upgrade—and how to overcome them
    • How to protect your ratings from a downgrade
  • Developing/Maintaining a Constructive Relationship with the Agencies
    • The steps to issuer credibility—the foundation of a constructive relationship
    • Between-meeting communications; managing the process over time
    • Protecting the Government from unfair treatment by the agencies
    • The dozen Do’s and Don’ts of agency relations