LONDON, September 22. /TASS/. The international rating agency Standard & Poor’s lowered its long-term foreign-currency and local-currency corporate credit ratings on Evraz North America (ENA), a subsidiary of Russian steel giant Evraz Group, to 'B+' from 'BB-', the outlook is stable.

"North America-based steel producer Evraz North America Plc (ENA) has demonstrated significantly weaker operating and financial performances than we assumed previously," the agency said in its statement.

"We are lowering the long-term corporate credit rating on the company to 'B+' from 'BB-' and revising our assessment of ENA's financial risk profile to ‘highly leveraged’," the statement said.

"Our stable outlook reflects our expectation that ENA does not aggressively increase its debt, and consequently maintains a sustainable capital structure," the agency added.

Evraz is one of the world’s largest vertically integrated metals and mining companies with assets in Russia, Ukraine, Europe, the United States, Canada and South Africa. The company, which employs over 110,000 people, produced 16.1 million tons of steel in 2013.