NEW YORK (Standard&Poor's) Nov. 15, 2007--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that its ratings on St. Paul, Minn.-based 3M Co. (AA/Stable/A-1+) are not affected by the company's announcement that it will acquire Aearo Technologies Inc. (B/Negative/--) for $1.2 billion. 3M will finance the purchase with cash and other borrowings. 3M retains capacity to fund a transaction of this size within the current rating, with cash and current equivalents of $2.7 billion and debt to EBITDA of about 0.9x as of Sept. 30, 2007. We note that leverage has been increasing modestly in 2007 as share repurchases have exceeded discretionary cash flow for the nine months ended September. Still, operating trends have been consistently positive, with increasing revenues
