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Alliance & Leicester Dowgraded by Moody's

stv1x
Posts: 69 Forumite
As the title suggests, Alliance and Leicester have been downgraded to E+ by Moody's as reported on Newsnight this evening. Anyone else catch that?
One of many links, not BBC related, can be found here
http://www.citywire.co.uk/personal/-/news/markets-companies-and-funds/content.aspx?ID=336800
One of many links, not BBC related, can be found here
http://www.citywire.co.uk/personal/-/news/markets-companies-and-funds/content.aspx?ID=336800
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Comments
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Comments (16)
Ian Phillips
14:46 | 15 Apr 2009
Aren't Moody's the "twonks" that rated the Toxic Debt that put us in this mess in the first place?
yep, santandar is probably better then any of our banks afaik. Worst thing I heard about them was they increased their stake in a usa bank0 -
Not only A&L and Abbey! It also looks like just about every large building society in Britain has been downgraded. I've been told that some have even gone down by 4 levels. Perhaps someone can clarify that?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/5160451/Moodys-slashed-mutuals-ratings-in-mass-downgrade.html
Moody's slashed mutuals' ratings in mass downgrade
Nine of Britain's biggest building societies, holding billions of pounds of customer deposits between them, have had their credit ratings cut to near "junk" status.
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Here's some more info. E+ sounds like 'junk' to me!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/apr/15/building-societies-downgraded
"In a shock warning that the sector is heading for potentially massive losses from the housing market crash, Chelsea Building Society, which has around half-a-million savers and 90,000 mortgage borrowers, saw its bank financial strength rating (BSFR) slide from C to E+. West Bromwich, the seventh largest society with £9.6bn in assets, fell from C- to E+. Britannia, Newcastle, Norwich and Peterborough, Principality, Skipton, and Yorkshire building societies were all downgraded from ratings in the C band to the riskier D band."
"The giant of the building society sector, Nationwide, saw its rating reduced from B to C-. Moody's also reduced the rating of Alliance & Leicester to E+ from C+, despite the bank now being part of Santander."0 -
This seems to be based on continuing house price falls:the actions had been taken following stress-testing scenarios which incorporated a peak to trough decline in house prices of 40%0
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Here's some more info.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/apr/15/building-societies-downgraded
Thanks for the links Andrew, some interesting reading. For us typical savers this news is probably more academic than anything, but it's a little reassuring to see the larger societies, like Nationwide, Coventry and Leeds, that stayed rated in the C band. Must be doing something right if Moody's are on a general downer elsewhere.
As it happens, those three are where the Coleslaw family silver (what's left of it :rolleyes:) is at the moment. Wish I could claim foresight - it's more luck than judgement.Everyone needs something to believe in.
I believe I need another beer.0 -
Bernard_Coleslaw wrote: »As it happens, those three are where the Coleslaw family silver (what's left of it :rolleyes:) is at the moment. Wish I could claim foresight - it's more luck than judgement.
Sometimes luck does matter.:)0
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