FT Alphaville »Moody’s downgrades Egypt to Ba2

Moody’s is the first to move on the Mubarak uprising:

DIFC – Dubai, January 31, 2011 — Moody’s Investors Service has today downgraded Egypt’s government bond ratings to Ba2 from Ba1 and has changed the outlook to negative from stable.

Today’s rating action was prompted by the recent significant rise in political event risk and concern that the policy response could undermine

Egypt’s already weak public finances. We had previously signaled that such developments may result in a ratings downgrade (see Moody’s latest Credit Opinion on Egypt published 24th November 2010).

Moody’s has today also downgraded the country ceiling for foreign currency bonds to Baa3 from Baa2 and the country ceiling for foreign currency bank deposits to Ba3 from Ba2. The outlook on these ratings was changed to negative from stable. The short-term country ceiling for foreign currency bonds was downgraded to P-3 from P-2. The local currency ceilings were downgraded to Baa1 from A3.