Moody's Investors Service last week assigned its new bank ratingmethodology of Counterparty Risk Assessments (CR Assessments) to nineVietnamese banks.

However, credit ratings assigned to these nine Vietnamese banks remain unchanged.

Accordingto Moody's long-term CR Assessments, it has given B1 (CR) to VietnamBank for Industry and Trade (Vietinbank) and Bank for Investment andDevelopment of Vietnam (BIDV), while B2 (CR) has been assigned to AsiaCommercial Bank (ACB), Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MB),Saigon-Hanoi Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SHB), Saigon Thuong TinCommercial Joint-Stock Bank (Sacombank), and Vietnam Prosperity JointStock Commercial Bank (VP Bank), as well as Vietnam Technological andCommercial Joint Stock Bank (Techcombank) and Vietnam International Bank(VIB).

Concurrently, not-prime short-term CR Assessments have been assigned to all the Vietnamese banks.

According to Moody's, this announcement follows the publication of its new bank rating methodology on March 16, 2015.

CRAssessments are opinions on how counterparty obligations are likely tobe treated if a bank fails and are distinct from debt and depositratings, in that they consider only the risk of default rather thanexpected loss; and are applicable to counterparty obligations andcontractual commitments rather than debt or deposit instruments.

ACR Assessment is an opinion on the counterparty risk related to abank's covered bonds, contractual performance obligations (servicing),and derivatives such as swaps, letters of credit, guarantees, andliquidity facilities.-VNA