S&P Pessimistic on Bank, Bond Insurer Ratings
Standard & Poor’s has expressed a pessimistic but not catastrophic view of the ratings outlook for banks and bond insurers.
On a conference call to review the 4Q07 trends in banking results and also review its outlook for 2008 bank rating trends, S&P indicated it is expecting 2008 to be a difficult year, CreditSights says in S&P: Pessimism Prevails as Pressures Build on Bank Ratings.
Earlier this week, S&P cautioned that Bond Insurer Downgrades Could Lead to Bank Downgrades.
According to CreditSights, on the call S&P stated that it was not yet ready to “downgrade the whole sector” as it believed the banks entered the cycle from a position of strength.
S&P noted that while most of the Collateralized Debt Obligation write-downs have probably occurred, there could be more losses as a result of the loss of monoline insurance protection. S&P estimated that banks had as much as $125 billion of exposure to monoline insurers via hedges for assets such as CDOs and structured securities.
S&P noted that if the hedges covered about 40% of the face value, this would imply an absolute worst case loss of $50 billion.
More likely, S&P noted that the monolines would likely be downgraded to the AA-range, and that banks would have to post greater reserves for the higher counterparty risk.
On a stand-alone basis, the agency stated that the higher reserves would not be enough to cause a downgrade in most cases. However, one exception S&P cited was Merrill Lynch, which it named as the most vulnerable to a further downgrade based on a monoline downgrade scenario.
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