The exclusive U.S. triple-A ratings club—those nonfinancial U.S. corporations with Standard & Poor's top credit rating—gained a new member on Sept. 22. Standard & Poor's Ratings Services assigned its AAA corporate credit rating and A-1+ short-term and commercial paper ratings to Redmond (Wash.)-based Microsoft Corp. (MSFT). The outlook is stable.
The list was thinned to just five names in January as United Parcel Service (UPS) saw its Standard & Poor's credit rating downgraded (BusinessWeek.com, 1/10/08) to AA- from AAA. The number of AAA-rated U.S. nonfinancials has fallen sharply from a peak of 32 in the early 1980s (BusinessWeek.com, 3/11/05).