S&P assigns Alleghany notes BBB

Standard & Poor's said it assigned a BBB rating to Alleghany Corp.'s offering of $300 million of senior unsecured notes due 2044.

The counterparty credit rating on Alleghany is BBB with a stable outlook.

The company will use the net proceeds from the sale to redeem a portion of Transatlantic Holdings Inc.'s 5.75% $667 million senior debt due Dec. 14, 2015, including a make-whole premium payment. Transatlantic Holdings is a wholly owned subsidiary of Alleghany and holds the group's reinsurance operations.

On a pro forma basis, based on the financials as of June 30, 2014, S&P expects the company's debt leverage to remain flat at about 20%, which remains supportive of the current ratings.

For 2014-2015, the agency expects a combined ratio in the range of 94%-97% assuming a normalized level of catastrophe losses. It also expects debt leverage to remain at or below 20% and the fixed-charge coverage ratio to be about 6x.

© 2015 Prospect News.
All content on this website is protected by copyright law in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the use of the person downloading only.
Redistribution and copying are prohibited by law without written permission in advance from Prospect News.
Redistribution or copying includes e-mailing, printing multiple copies or any other form of reproduction.