Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is now paying Moody’s Investors Service Inc to rate the debt of various of its subsidiaries and Moody’s has assigned a Prime-2 rating to Samsung Electronics Holding GmbH for commercial paper guaranteed by Samsung Electronics Holding GmbH, headquartered in Sulzbach, Germany, a holding company in the Samsung group. The rating is based on the guarantor’s importance to the Korean economy and the Samsung Chaebol, its good domestic market positions and a growing, though highly cyclical, semiconductor memory business. The rating also reflects Samsung’s large exposure to the fiercely competitive consumer electronics industry and its highly leveraged capital structure, Moody’s added. The agency also reviewed alternate sources of liquidity for Samsung Electronics Holding GmbH in case of a potential disruption of the German commercial paper market and considers the amount of Korean bank credit available to the company adequate for the expected size and maturity structure of the commercial paper notes.
