WASHINGTON | The problem wasn’t just the forced flexibility implied in the S&P models to rate AAA what should had never been awarded top quality grades. The supervisory models themselves were incorrect, to start with.
NEW YORK | Their outlook remains negative, but there is some brightness in the horizon, the agency reckons. Standard and Poors will not cut Spain’s rating because it believes the country has done its homework, showing a strong commitment to economic and fiscal adjustment. It will continue to receive support from its European partners and the ECB and therefore its debt will remain below 80 percent of GDP beyond 2015….
LONDON | The worsening of Spain’s debt risk grades will have grave implications, whether market participants believe the situation in which the country’s public finances are is reversible or not. Portfolio manager at Skandia Investment Group’s fixed income funds and researcher, Anthony Gillham distrusts talk of priced-in negative events. Although last Friday’s announcement by Standard and Poors that Spain is to be downgraded by two notches from A to BBB+ was…
The housing bubble, like the turbid monster of an old movie, blows in time and again. Didn’t Spain’s president Mariano Rajoy see it coming? Standard & Poor’s Rating Services might have opened his eyes when it lowered its long-term sovereign credit rating. The Kingdom of Spain woke up on Friday under the ‘BBB+’ tag from the previous ‘A’. The risk agency did not just cut down the short-term sovereign credit rating to…
By Tania Suárez, in Madrid | Spain’s bill auction on Tuesday has been another success for the sixth time in a row. This time, the Spanish Treasury has placed €2,506.8mn in Treasury bills at 3 and 6 months and so, beats its target of €2,500mn. The yields have fallen almost half a point compared to December’s results. Specifically, the Treasury has sold €1.43bn of the €6.053,85mn demanded by investors in…
By Julia Pastor, in Madrid | After some weeks of good tone in the European stock markets, they suffered the consequences on Monday of the massive rating cut by S&P last weekend. The Ibex35 woke up today with shares drowning in red, except for Ebro Foods and Gas Natural, and is being dominated by volatility for the rest of the day.However, it is the rating agencies’s credibility which is being called…
President José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero received an unexpected gift a day after national celebrations had offered him the chance to claim Spain's singularity. Risk agency Standard&Poor's announced in Thursday's last minutes that it had downgraded the Spanish sovereign debt qualification to AA-, from AA. S&P's analysts enumerate a few reasons for their decision: “high unemployment, tighter financial conditions, the still high level of private sector debt, and the likely economic slowdown in…
President José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero received an unexpected gift a day after national celebrations had offered him the chance to claim Spain's singularity. Risk agency Standard&Poor's announced in Thursday's last minutes that it had downgraded the Spanish sovereign debt qualification to AA-, from AA. S&P's analysts enumerate a few reasons for their decision: “high unemployment, tighter financial conditions, the still high level of private sector debt, and the likely economic slowdown in…