Standard & Poor's Ratings Services has assigned its A+ rating to Mitsubishi Corporation's series 77 senior unsecured domestic straight bonds. The JPY 100 billion bonds, due on December 26th 2016, carry a coupon rate of 0.56%.

Mitsubishi is strong in both resource and non resource businesses. The company is particularly strong in the coking coal, energy, automobile, and food businesses. Thanks to its diversified earnings sources, which are backed by a wide range of businesses developed in Japan and overseas, Mitsubishi has maintained high profitability for years. This is a considerable feat, considering that the general trading companies weathered a harsh business environment after Japan's economic bubble burst in the 1990s.

Mitsubishi has been active in investing in companies and businesses, as well as resource projects. It holds a large amount of less-liquid assets with highly fluctuating cash flow. Although Mitsubishi's risk appetite is high like other major traders, Standard & Poor's believes that the company maintains an adequate balance between capital and earnings relative to risk assets through adequate risk management. Its net debt to equity ratio remained at a sound level of about 1 time as of September 30th 2011. Due to its sizable overseas projects, we view Mitsubishi's funding capabilities, including foreign currencies funding, as well as liquidity management capabilities as extremely important factors in our credit analysis.

Standard & Poor's believes that the company's liquidity is managed adequately, given its stable access to domestic and overseas capital markets and favorable relationships with financial institutions, including its main banks.