Moody's Reviews Ratings for 114 European Banks

Moody’s Investors Service has announced rating actions affecting 114 financial institutions (counted by group) in 16 European countries. The actions reflect, to differing degrees, the combined pressures from:

• The adverse and prolonged impact of the euro area crisis, which makes the operating environment very difficult for European banks.
• The deteriorating creditworthiness of euro area sovereigns, which led to the adjustment of the ratings for nine European sovereigns on 13 February 2012.

Longer-term, the substantial challenges faced by banks and securities firms with significant capital market activities. While there are mitigating factors such as the currently supportive stance of many governments towards their banking systems and accommodative monetary policies, these are overshadowed by the aforementioned pressures, in Moody’s opinion. Moody’s expects that once the reviews announced today are resolved, its EU bank ratings will fully reflect the effects of currently foreseen adverse credit drivers.

Moody’s actions can be summarised as follows:

• For 99 financial institutions, the standalone credit assessments have been placed on review for downgrade.
• For 109 institutions, the long-term debt and deposit ratings have been placed on review for downgrade.
• For 66 institutions, the short-term ratings have been placed on review for downgrade.

The financial institutions affected by this announcement are headquartered in the following countries (counted by group and listed by parent domicile): Austria (8), Belgium (1), Denmark (8), Finland (1), France (10), Germany (7), Italy (24), Luxembourg (1), Netherlands (6), Norway (1), Portugal (6), Slovenia (4), Spain (21), Sweden (5),Switzerland (2), UK (9).

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