Tuesday, 9 February 2010

'Credit rating firms resigned to more withdrawals in GCC'



The prevailing tough credit environment could lead to an increasing number of issuers withdrawing from credit rating agencies.

This is according to the regional chief of Standard & Poor's, whose service Emirates NBD recently dropped a day after the credit rating firm withdrew from Dubai Holding. "Do we expect more companies to withdraw their ratings? It could be," Jan Willem Plantagie, Managing Director of S&P Middle East told Emirates Business.

"We should not forget that we still live in a financial crisis and in such an economic environment, you will see downgrades. For us, the key thing is to maintain our analytical integrity, keep our independence and our transparency. If that means we have to downgrade companies and if that means a company is unhappy and that they would withdraw the ratings, so be it. We are insensitive to revenue loss," he said.

1 comment:

  1. The ‘Main Threats’ section breaks down downside risks and upside potential to the private equity investor in the areas of: Criminal Risk, Governance Risk, Social Risk, Economic Risk, Legal Risk and Environmental Risk; showing positive trends throughout in the country as a whole.

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