NEW YORK (Standard&Poor's) Dec. 10, 2012--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that it assigned its 'BBB+' rating to Ecolab Inc.'s proposed offering of $500 million in senior unsecured notes. The company plans to use proceeds to partly finance its announced $2.1 billion acquisition of Champion Technologies. The existing ratings on Ecolab, including the 'BBB+' corporate credit, rating remain unchanged. Ecolab's credit metrics pro forma for the acquisition and planned financing are expected to be in an appropriate range for the rating at year-end 2013. Specifically, we expect the ratio of funds from operations-to-total debt to be in the 20% to 30% range in line with our expectations at the company's "significant" financial risk profile. Our view is
