Issuer Ratings: An Issuer Default Rating (IDR) is an assessment of an issuer‘s relative
vulnerability to default on financial obligations, and is intended to be comparable across
industry groups and countries. Issuers may often carry both Long-Term and Short-Term IDRs.
Because both types of IDRs are based on an issuer‘s fundamental credit characteristics, a
relationship exists between them (see Figure 1 and Appendix Short-Term Ratings Criteria for
Non-Financial Corporates).