MSE News: Major UK banks downgraded by Moody's 22 June 2012 at 10:37AM in Budgeting & bank accounts 8 replies 1.9K views

Former_MSE_Helen

"15 of the world's biggest institutions have been downgraded by ratings agency Moody's, including UK giants ..."

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Major UK banks downgraded by Moody's

Reaper

That makes Lloyds on the same rating as Santander UK and RBS even worse. Will we have lots of panic posts about it as we did when Santander were downgraded? Will Kent County Council move its money again? No, probably not.

zerog

Reaper wrote: »

That makes Lloyds on the same rating as Santander UK and RBS even worse. Will we have lots of panic posts about it as we did when Santander were downgraded? Will Kent County Council move its money again? No, probably not.

Would be nice if MSE actually gave us the ratings instead of writing about notches!

innovate

zerog wrote: »

Would be nice if MSE actually gave us the ratings instead of writing about notches!

Laying your hands on the actual ratings seems notoriously difficult, unless you pay the rating agencies vast amounts of money for what is nothing much more than the opinion of some people who spend their time number-crunching. and who have historically claimed they know all about the banks. Of course, none of them saw the the Lehman Brothers collapse coming, or that of the Icelandic banks. So ever since they have been working on re-establishing their credibility.

Anyway, may be between MSE and its new owners, may be they can manage to update the October 2011 ratings table moneysupermarket pulled together? It's obviously getting somewhat out of date now - - the recent Santander downgrade isn't reflected, and nor are the most recent ones.
It would be superb to have facts to hand, rather than speculate what one or two notches less actually might mean.

Latest Moody's downgrade puts HSBC to Aa3, and RBS to Baa1. Not sure what Barclays are now, probably also Baa1.

mr_fishbulb

Does that mean they have to pay me more interest on the money they are borrowing from me?

innovate

Wouldn't that be nice, so probably 'no'. But I think they might want you to pay a bit more for your mortgage since they need to reduce their risk.

Same as always with the banks -tails you lose, heads you don't win.

Deepfatfriar

Personally I take all this hype with a pinch of salt. Let's not forget these same agencies gave Lehman Bros a triple AAA rating a week before they went bust. They also gave all those poisonous financial instruments the same rating when in reality they were garbage.

It is time that a more accurate way was reolved in this type of thing as I understand it no one rates Moodys or the rest.

JuicyJesus

innovate wrote: »

Wouldn't that be nice, so probably 'no'. But I think they might want you to pay a bit more for your mortgage since they need to reduce their risk.

Same as always with the banks -tails you lose, heads you don't win.

Or it could be because there is an £85,000 minimum guarantee on your savings which you can largely withdraw at any time you please, meaning any risk to you is effectively negated, while millions are in negative equity so there is a substantial risk to the bank (and even if they're not, repossession is expensive) and they cannot simply pull out of a regulated mortgage contract on a whim. So, fairly valid reasons there.

Not that they need one, seeing as they are profit-making enterprises, making money thus being their raison d'etre.

Sailmakers

Downgrades were expected and already incorporated in share prices so it won't Hurt the banks values to badly. I do find it hilarious for all those who moved money from Santander in the panic and moved it to banks on the same rating or worse...