Getting a fix on bonds
Grosvenor's Bondwatch service, which rates fixed interest offerings, is getting mixed reviews from people who have had their debt issues rated.
Wednesday, June 12th 2002, 3:20AM
At one end are people like St Laurence Group managing director Kevin Podmore who has some concerns about the rating system.
He says Grosvenor rate offerings by only sitting down and looking at the prospectus and investment statement.
A proper rating service should include the raters going out and interviewing the managers, in the same way sharebrokers and fund managers do company visits and managed fund research houses sit down with the managers.
Grosvenor general manager Mark Tume says the service isn't designed to rate issues in the same manner as organisations such as international ratings agency Standard and Poor's.
He says issuers go to S&P and ask (pay) for a rating. This is often required to help market the offering.
Grosvenor does a bond rating when one of its adviser clients asks for the information. The idea is to look at the issue from the perspective of an investor.
Consequently it makes its rating decision only on the publicly available information.
Podmore's other concern is that Grosvenor has chosen to rate only two of St Laurence's offers and these are two of the higher risk ones.
Both these offerings come out at the bottom of Grosvenor's scale.
Podmore doesn't have too much problem with this except to say that these two ratings taint his other offers, consequently it is damaging for his business.
Dorchester Pacific managing director Brent King says the process is not perfect but it's about as good as one can get it.
Bondwatch uses a ratings template that assesses 47 different criteria for bond issues, including such things as the history and ownership of issuers, governance and management structures, as well as balance sheet and financial analysis.
The actual criteria are not disclosed, but Tume says they are the normal ones people use when assessing bond offers.
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