Standard & Poor’s junks Russian credit rating: The international rating agency Standard & Poor’s has downgraded Russia from BBB- to BB+, or to below investment-grade rating. Although Russian still holds a BBB+ rating from both Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch’s Rating, if they follow suit it will become more expensive for Russia to service its external debt; between them, its government, banks and companies owe $600bn on the foreign markets.
“If oil prices continue to decline and there is an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, the downgrade of the other agencies is quite possible,” Renaissance Capital analyst Oleg Kuzmin said. Given that Moody’s and Fitch’s only recently revised its rating for Russia this was unlikely to happen until Q2 2015, he added. FT.com, Rosbalt, Bloomberg