Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has lowered the status of 37 large international banks, reducing Rabobank one notch to ‘stable AA’ from ‘AAA’.

Nevertheless, Rabobank remains the most credit-worthy of all privately held banks in the eyes of S&P’s, Moody’s and Fitch, the cooperative bank’s CFO Bert Bruggink told BNR radio. The change was expected because of new ways of calculating ratings, he said.
S&P’s new ratings methodology, announced earlier this month, evaluates banks’ creditworthiness based on economic and industry risks, bank-specific strengths and weaknesses, as well as the ‘likelihood of external government or group support’, CNN said.