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April 27, 2009 (LBO) - Sri Lanka's Commercial Bank of Ceylon said its Bangladesh operations have been given an 'A' rating by the banking regulator in that country. Last year, the Commercial Bank’s operations in Bangladesh was awarded a rating of AA+ for long term credit, an upgrade from the previous rating of AA, by Credit Rating Information and Services Ltd. (CRISL). The rating followed an assessment based on the CAMELS method of international bank ratings, a reputed US supervisory rating system, Commercial Bank said in a statement.

The CAMELS rating assessed six strategic factors covered by the abbreviation, Capital Adequacy, Asset Quality, Management Quality, Earnings, Liquidity and Sensitivity to market risks.

In all, 48 banks in Bangladesh were assessed till September 2008 for this latest rating.

In the CAMELS ratings, each bank is assigned a score of one (A) to five (E) for each factor.

"If a bank has an average score less than two, it is considered to be a high-quality institution, while banks with scores greater than three are considered to be less-than-satisfactory establishments," S Prabagar, country manager of Commercial Bank Bangl