Top European Banks Ambushed in S&P Downgrade Too (STD, BCS, CS, DB, ING, UBS)

The details of the S&P bank sector downgrade were due to ratings criteria changes in the banking sector.  24/7 Wall St. has a detailed downgrade of the banking sector and the CreditWatch “Negative” is going to bring this to a head in the very near future in the next 90 days.  This was against all of the large and heavily covered banks as well as the call was made on 37 institutions.

Among some of the European bank downgrades, some of the key banks were Banco Santander S.A. (NYSE: STD), Barclays PLC (NYSE: BCS), Credit Suisse AG (NYSE: CS), Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE: DB), ING Groep NV (NYSE: ING), and UBS AG (NYSE: UBS).

The ratings action was made due to S&P applying its new credit ratings criteria to the parent companies of each of the banks and their subsidiaries. 

The good news is that the after-hours reaction is very muted in the ADRs of these key European banking sector names here.  Most of the U.S. banks are flirting with drops of about 1% after this news during the after-hours session.