Standard & Poor's reduced on Tuesday its credit ratings on several big banks in the United States and Europe as the result of a sweeping overhaul of its ratings criteria.
Standard and Poor's Corp said Thursday it was upgrading the credit rating of Brazil by one notch to BBB, adding that the upgrade reflected the country’s increasing capacity to hold up against the overall deterioration in the global economic outlook.
China has reduced its holdings of US debt to their lowest level in a year, after the US's credit rating was downgraded by Standard & Poor's (S&P). China sold 36.5bn dollars in US Treasuries or bonds to cut its holding to 1.137bn in August, latest data by the US Treasury Department showed.
Britain's prized triple-A sovereign debt rating could come under pressure if the government strays from its path of public deficit cuts in the face of weaker growth, credit agency Standard & Poor's said on Monday.
United States regulators disclosed they may take action against Standard & Poor's for securities law violations after the ratings agency gave top grades to a package of securitized mortgages in 2007 that quickly soured.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was quick to reject a long-feared assessment from ratings agency Standard & Poor’s that saw Italy’s credit rating downgraded by one notch on Tuesday.
Standard & Poor’s reported that Argentina’s rating remains as “B” (global scale, local and foreign currency) and “raAA” (national scale for Argentina).
Ratings agency Standard & Poor's officials privately met with large bond-investors weeks before the firm's US debt downgrade, leaving some believing the chance of a rating downgrade was higher than they had previously thought, the Wall Street Journal said.
Standard & Poor's ratings services upgraded Mercosur member Paraguay's credit status a notch after the country reached an agreement with neighboring Brazil to take more revenue from the shared Itaipú hydroelectric complex, the world’s largest operational dam.
Peru had its foreign debt rating raised one level by Standard & Poor’s, which said it expects recently elected President Ollanta Humala to continue policies that support the country’s economic expansion.