Institutional Investor has announced that The Bahamas has been ranked a top performer in its country credit ratings, finishing the year 2002 among the top 10 countries in the world for most improved sovereign creditworthiness.

The country by country ratings developed by Institutional Investor are based upon information provided by senior economists and sovereign risk analysts at leading global banks and money management and securities firms. The Bahamas’ credit rating improved by 5.2 which placed The Bahamas at #7 in the *Who’s Up The Most Winner’s List*. Of particular note was that during the month of September 2002, the regional ranking for The Bahamas was #2, preceded only by Chile.

In the ratings process, each of 151 countries are graded on a scale of 1-100, with 100 representing those countries that have the least chance of default. The names of the respondents are kept strictly confidential, and participants are not permitted to rate their home countries. The individual responses are weighted using a formula that gives more importance to responses from institutions with greater worldwide exposure and more sophisticated country analysis systems.

Institutional Investor has been publishing industry-standard rankings for the global financial community for over 30 years.

Founded in 1967, Institutional Investor was acquired in 1997 by Euromoney plc, a leading international business-to-business publisher that was founded in 1969 as a subsidiary of Associated Newspapers. Following the acquisition of Institutional Investor, the company was renamed “Euromoney Institutional Investor plc” in 1999.