A release entitled, "Standard & Poor's Applies Its Revised Bank Criteria To 37 Of The Largest Rated Banks And Certain Subsidiaries", said yesterday, "Standard & Poor's Ratings Services today said it reviewed its ratings on 37 of the largest financial institutions in the world by applying its new ratings criteria for banks, which were published on Nov. 9, 2011. See the Ratings List for the ratings on these banks, their core and highly strategic subsidiaries, and other subsidiaries that we took rating actions on as a result of applying our new criteria to their parents. We will review all ratings that we placed on CreditWatch within 90 days. Ratings on CreditWatch are designated as Watch Neg or Watch Pos in the list below." Wells Fargo Securities Fixed-Income Strategist Garrett Sloan wrote, "The downgrades touched the short-term ratings for many large U.S. financial institutions. These include the short-term ratings for Bank of America Corp (A-2 from A1), Bank of New York Mellon Corp (A-1 from A-1+), Barclays Bank PLC (A-1 from A-1+), JPMorgan Chase Bank NA (A-1 from A-1+), Citigroup Inc (A-2 from A-1), Goldman Sachs Group (A-2 from A-1), HSBC Holdings PLC (A-1 from A-1+), HBOS PLC (A-2 from A-1), Lloyds Banking Group PLC (A-2 from A-1), Morgan Stanley (A-2 from A-1), Merrill Lynch & Co Inc (A-2 from A-1), Wells Fargo & Co (A-1 from A-1+), Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (A-2 from A-1)."
