Confirming the development, Crisil managing director R Ravimohan told The Financial Express that the agency will rate all restructuring options available to companies, including mergers, demergers, asset swaps and acquisitions.

In effect, Crisil will give ratings for merged or demerged entities in advance before the actual mergers or demergers take place. This will help corporates take a decision on how to go about the deal. "We will indicate the advantages and disadvantages of each of the options (of mergers, demergers, etc) available before a company," Ravimohan said.

Crisil has already concluded four such deals. The company MD, however, refused to give the details of the deals. "The cash division of Crisil will now be giving advanced ratings to M&A deals on evaluation basis," he said.

In a simple case of a merger between two companies, Crisil will assign advancerating, prior to the merger, to both the merged entity and the merging entity indicating their strengths once the deal is concluded. "This is a tool which we are making available to the management of a company going in for restructuring. It is only to understand the impact of various options before restructuring, not for the purpose of raising debt and will, therefore, not be published," Ravimohan pointed out.

However when asked to elaborate, Ravimohan declined to divulge the details. "These ratings will assist the management to redefine, say its equity and debt structure, on the strength of probable ratings under the various scenarios like asset transfer, business transfer, valuation scenario, etc," he said.

He also added that the same rating would be applicable to the company post restructuring, in case these parameters are frozen, and will put an element of certainty in the debt view of the company. "This is an important service to the restructuring entity and details the impact of any such activitylike mergers and acquisitions on the future performance and financial strength of the company," Ravimohan added.

Industry sources said that recently Crisil had also pioneered the concept of private rating of pure private placement deals, which are available only to the issuer and the investor. The agency has already concluded 14 such ratings.

"The main precondition for such rating exercise is that there can be no subsequent listing, failing which the ratings will lose their validity and will have to be redefined," Crisil sources pointed out.