Brickwork Ratings launches operations

Brickwork Ratings, the fifth rating agency recognised by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), has launched its operations.

Promoted by Vivek Kulkarni, former IT secretary of Karnataka and N Balasubramanian, former chairman of SIDBI, the new rating agency aims to help Indian investors make informed investment decisions that are appropriate for their risk profile.

Being the first rating agency in south India, the company will focus largely on south Indian companies and slowly expand into western and northern India, said Kulkarni, who along with other founder has invested $1 million to start the company.

“Brickwork Ratings will extend knowledge-based services to the domestic market through a ratings methodology with a mission to help investors make investment decisions,” he said.

Kulkarni said Brickwork Ratings methodology has been painstakingly designed after studying the standard rating models developed by Edward Altman, W H Beaver, E B Deakin, David Lando, Darrell Duffie and many others and from the experience of following the trends of thousands of companies over the past ten years.

Based on this study, Brickwork has shortlisted a few critical parameters and developed an internal validation model.

In addition, Brickwork uses Porters’ Five Force model of competitive position, financial ratio analysis as well as the latest valuation methods in its investigation, he said.

N Balasubramanian, chairman, Brickwork Ratings said, “Our objective is to close the need gap for knowledge-based information, offering products such as rating of short and long term paper, company fixed deposits, tier-I and tier-II capital instruments of banks, structured products andIPO grading among others.”