It happens even in the best economies. In the night Moody's downgrades seven German banks and their respective subsidiaries. The decision came for "the increase in risk associated with the quality of bank assets relating to the euro area – explains the American agency in a note – and to the limited capacity to absorb further losses”.
Among the institutes - all downgraded by one notch - there are also two branches of Commerzbank (New York and Paris), the second largest bank in Germany, which moved from A2 to A3. The other affected banks are Eurohypo (from A3 to Baa2), Dekabank Deutsche Girozentrale (from Aa3 to A1), Dz Bank (from Aa3 to A1), Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg (from A2 to A3), Landesbank Hessen-Thueringen (from A1 to A2), Norddeutsche Landesbank (from A2 to A3) and UniCredit Bank (from A2 to A3).
The outlook of all these institutions, with the exception of Unicredit, is now stable. Moody's then announced that the analysis of Deutsche Bank's rating is continuing and will give definitive results in the future.
Downgrade also for the three largest Austrian banks – Erste Bank, Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) and Bank Austria, branch of the Italian group Unicredit – due to their exposure to the financial crisis in Eastern European countries. In a press release, Moody's points out that the Erste Bank group is heavily exposed in Hungary and Romania, while the downgrade of Bank Austria is due to the difficult situation in which Unicredit finds itself.
The rating on the Erste Bank group was downgraded by two steps, to A3. Instead, RBI – a branch of the Austrian Raiffeisen group and of Bank Austria, listed on the stock exchange - slips by one step to A2. Finally Bank Austria was downgraded to A3.
