INTERNATIONAL: Fitch Publishes Ratings Trends over 20 Year Period

Wednesday October 11 2017

On October 10th 2017, Ratings Agency Fitch published an overview containing the upgrades and downgrades to Countries ratings and economic outlooks over a twenty year period.

This overview highlights which Nations had the most downgrades from 1997-2017. The worst nation in terms of downgrading was Greece (first downgraded in, 2009) with a total of 14 downgrades.

This is followed by Korea (1997) and Cyprus (2011) each with 12 downgrades respectively. Eleven of these episodes also resulted in defaults on their Long-Term Foreign Currency ratings.

These figures indicate that these nations suffered three downgrades in three subsequent calendar years. Fitch notes that nations who suffer subsequent downgrades will on average take two years to return to their initial rating.

Notably the Agency has predicted that such trends appear to be continuing at present. For instance Nations such as Bahrain (BB+), Brazil (BB) and Suriname (B-) contain a Negative Outlook, with their chances of a further downgrade appearing likely.

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