WSJ -- Exxon Set a Record With Its AAA Run .................................................
Apr 26, 2016
Exxon Set a Record With Its AAA Run
By Kevin Kingsbury
It’s the end of an era.
Tuesday’s downgrade of Exxon Mobil Corp. ends the longest stretch in the history of Standard & Poor’s that a company has held on to its top AAA rating. The ratings firm says Exxon and its predecessor entities have had the gold-plated designation since 1949.
Until this decade, AT&T Corp. held that distinction. It was at AAA from 1923 until 1984, when it lost the honor amid the company’s breakup.
There’s also a third U.S. company which was atop the rankings for a half-century. General Electric Co. was at AAA from 1956 until March 2009, when GE was downgraded in the fallout of the financial crisis. At the time, Chief Executive Jeff Immelt said, “We will continue to run GE with the disciplines of a AAA company.”
There’s currently two domestic firms with the grade at S&P: Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft Inc.
Even Exxon’s lengthy tenure as a top-rated entity wasn’t quite as long as the federal government. The U.S. had a AAA rating at S&P from 1941 until 2011, when it was the only ratings firm to cut the country’s sovereign grade in the wake of the “fiscal cliff” then. Moody’s and Fitch continue to have both the U.S. and Exxon at AAA.
Some former AAA companies from years gone by remain blue-chip names, including fellow Dow Jones Industrial Average members 3M Co., Chevron Corp., Coca-Cola Co., DuPont & Co., International Business Machines Corp., Merck & Co. and Pfizer Inc.
But there’s also some now-has beens which were once top-of-the-line AAA companies. That group includes Eastman Kodak Co. and Sears Holdings Corp.
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