Standard & Poor's demotes X5 Retail Group

UrBC, Moscow, December 8, 2010. The international rating agency placed X5 Retail Group N.V. BB- long-term credit rating on CreditWatch, with Negative rating outlook; this means the ratings could be demoted or affirmed. At the same time, Standard & Poor's placed OAO Kopeika Trade House’s B- long-term credit rating and ruBBB national scale rating on CreditWatch with Positive rating outlook, which means the ratings could be promoted or affirmed. ‘Both companies’ ratings were placed on CreditWatch after X5 Retail Group reported it had bought a 100% shareholding in Kopeika,’ the agency’s

Standard & Poor’s credit rating service demoted TMK Capital’s bond ratings down to B, placing the bonds’ rating on CreditWatch, with Negative rating outlook. ‘We actually believe the Russian steel pipes manufacturer’s business solvency indicators will grow much worse this year than we had expected,’ the agency reports. ‘TMK’s rating has been demoted from B+ to B, with the same Negative rating outlook. We also had to decrease the ratings of two priority debenture bond issues, of which the first one, worth $300m, is to be retired in 2009 and the second $600m one is to be retired in 2011.

The international rating agency demoted Alfa-Bank Ukraine’s long- and short-term Contractor Credit Rating from СС/С to SD/SD. The bank’s national scale rating was also decreased from uaCC to SD. Standard & Poor’s Credit Rating Service has also removed all these ratings from their CreditWatch list a month after they had been placed there with Negative rating outlook on July 3, 2009. ‘The Group supports Alfa-Bank Ukraine’s liquidity and market capitalization and has recently helped the bank to make an advance payment on their bond exchange deal. About a quarter of the bank’s liabilities is

The rating agency Moody’s demoted Uniastrum Bank’s long-term deposit rating outlook to Negative due to the demotion of the bank’s parent enterprise Bank of Cyprus’s rating, RBC daily reports. The bank’s long-term deposit rating given by Moody’s has been affirmed at Ba3, but the rating outlook has been changed from Stable to Negative. The agency’s analysts report the outlook had to be reconsidered because of the problems faced by the parent company Bank of Cyprus that owns 80% of Uniastrum Bank. The former proprietors Gagik Zakaryan and Georgy Piskov own a 10% shareholding each. Moody’s

Fitch Ratings carried out a number of rating researches involving the daughter companies of the Italian bank UniCredit S.p.A. (A/Rating Watch Negative/F2) based in Central and Eastern Europe. The research was done after the bank’s long-term Issuer Default Rating (A) was placed on the Rating Watch, with Negative rating outlook. The rating agency reconsidered the rating outlook for the long-term Issuer Default Rating of UniCreditBank Russia (BBB+) from Positive to Stable. This change reflects the growing uncertainty as to the parent enterprise’s capacity to support its daughter banks in the