S&P downgrades Standard Chartered Bank, says outlook negative

HONG KONG - Standard & Poor's has lowered its long-term issuer credit rating on Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) and its subsidiary, Standard Chartered Bank (China) Ltd., to 'A+' from 'AA-', and says the outlook is negative. “We also lowered our short-term issuer credit rating on the banks to 'A-1' from 'A-1+',”S&P said in a statement.

“We affirmed our 'cnAAA/cnA-1+' Greater China regional scale rating on Standard Chartered Bank (China.”At the same time, we lowered our long-term issuer credit rating on the group's holding company, Standard Chartered PLC (SCPLC) and Standard Chartered Bank (Taiwan) Ltd. to 'A' from 'A+.' The outlook is negative.”

S&P also revised its rating outlook on Standard Chartered Bank Korea Ltd. to negative from positive.

S&P credit analyst Joseph Leung said S&P lowered the ratings because it considered the SCB group's creditworthiness to have weakened when compared with its peers, adding: ”We still consider SCB to be among the most creditworthy commercial banking groups globally.

“The SCB group is going through a tough period of late, after many years of
solid growth and strong financial performance. The group's pretax earnings
fell in 2013 from the year before, and results for the nine months to
September 2014 suggest that a further moderate but meaningful decline is
likely in 2014.” www.standardandpoors.com (ATI).