Italy-based credit information provider Cerved Group SpA is being acquired by CVC Capital Partners. As part of the acquisition, Cerved Technologies SpA (Cerved) is issuing senior secured and senior subordinated notes totaling €780 million. Cerved is the clear market leader for credit information services in Italy, with a broad, diverse client base. In our view, it has a "highly leveraged" financial risk profile and a "fair" business risk profile. We are therefore assigning our 'B' preliminary long-term corporate credit rating to Cerved. At the same time, we are assigning our 'B' preliminary issue rating to the group's proposed €250 million senior secured floating rate notes and proposed €300 million senior secured fixed rate notes, and our 'CCC+' preliminary issue rating
