Moody’s provides A1 to General Electric debt

Moody's Investors Service said it assigned A1 ratings to the new debt issuance by General Electric Co., including new euro-denominated senior unsecured notes due 2020, 2023 and 2027 totaling €3.15 billion.

Existing ratings remain unchanged, including the A1 senior unsecured debt rating and the P-1 short-term commercial paper rating.

The outlook remains stable.

Net proceeds from the offering will be used for general corporate purposes, including the refinancing of near-term bond maturities totaling $2 billion and other short-term borrowings.

"Like other large corporates and in light of its upcoming maturities, General Electric is opportunistically capitalizing on historically low bond yields available for the taking in what continues to be a very attractive Eurozone bond market following the quantitative easing launched by the European Central Bank earlier this year," Russell Solomon, Moody’s senior vice president and lead analyst for GE, said in a news release.

"The expected topping off of debt at levels above near-term refinancing needs is consistent with the company's more aggressive financial policies as noted of late, and as partially reflected in our earlier downgrade of GE's ratings last month."

"But the extra liquidity, so long as it is not ultimately used to effect incremental share repurchases, does bolster what otherwise looks to be a markedly diminished amount of cash in the current year's third quarter driven in large part by the pending Alstom Energy acquisition," Solomon added in the release.

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