S&P lowers credit ratings of 11 international banks

[Naveed Yaseen]

WASHINGTON: Global ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) lowered the credit ratings of 11 international banks by one or two notches on Friday on uncertainty over future performances amid financial turmoil.

The banks involved are Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS and Wells Fargo.

S&P also revised its outlook on British giant HSBC Holdings and a number of its subsidiaries to negative from stable. “The downgrades and revised outlooks reflect our view of the significant pressure on large complex financial institutions’ future performance due to increasing bank industry risk and the deepening global economic slowdown,” the ratings agency said in a statement. But it added that significant government intervention intended to stabilise the banking sector and restore public confidence “may balance these pressures to a large extent.”

The agency had raised earlier this month its “overall assessment of bank industry risk” and believed there would be more volatility in funding markets. S&P on Friday lowered the senior unsecured debt ratings of Citigroup to ‘A’ from ‘AA-’, Goldman Sachs’s long- and short-term counterparty credit ratings to ‘A/A-1’ from ‘AA-/A-1+’ and Morgan Stanley’s counterparty credit rating to ‘A/A-1’ from ‘A+/A-1+’. It lowered its long-term counterparty credit rating on Bank of America and its senior unsecured debt ratings on JPMorgan Chase & Co to ‘A+’ from ‘AA-’.

Credit Suisse’s long- and short-term counterparty credit ratings were lowered to ‘A+/A-1’ from ‘AA-/A-1+’ and its long-term rating was lowered to ‘A’ from ‘A+’. The long- and short-term counterparty credit ratings on Deutsche Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland were lowered to ‘A+/A-1’ from ‘AA-/A-1+’.

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