UniCredit announces that today the rating agency Moody's changed the long-term deposit and senior debt ratings by a single notch to Aa3 from Aa2 and the bank's financial strength rating (BFSR) to C+ from B-.
The outlook for the bank's deposit and debt ratings is stable from negative.
At the same time all the ratings assigned to UniCredit's two main subsidiaries, HVB and Bank Austria were affirmed with a stable outlook.
Moody's explained its rating decision with the deterioration of UniCredit's profitability during 2008, the difficult conditions faced by UniCredit's Markets and Investment Banking (MIB) division, and the delay in the expected improvement of the asset quality indicators following the acquisition of Capitalia due to the current market environment.
However, Moody's noted positively the planned capital strengthening measures for €6.6 billion announced by the bank and added that the UniCredit group has relatively limited direct exposure to areas such as structured credit, leveraged buyouts, conduits and monolines amongst others. The rating agency said that possible writedowns from such activities were likely to be manageable without impacting the bank's ratings, particularly if the planned measures to strengthen capital adequacy are successfully completed.
The full text of Moody's press release is available on the website of the company.
Milan, 7 October 2008
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