S&P Downgrades Dozens of Global Banks

By Dunstan Prial, FOXBusiness.com

Standard & Poor’s on Tuesday cut its credit ratings for many of the world’s largest banks, including Citigroup (NYSE: C), Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC).

The move follows S&P’s shift, announced earlier this month, in the methods it uses for rating the banks.

Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Corp. each had their long-term credit rating downgraded a single notch to A- from A. Similar cuts were applied to JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS).

Dozens of other banks were also affected by S&P’s new criteria and many of the downgrades stemmed from the affected banks’ exposure to the European debt crisis. S&P cited weaker confidence in governments’ ability to bail out struggling banks.

The new criteria for rating banks comes in the wake of criticism leveled at all three major rating firms – Moody’s and Fitch’s are the other two — that they rubber stamped their highest ratings on investment products loaded with subprime mortgages in the years leading up to the financial crisis.

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