OREANDA-NEWS. December 29, 2012. PrivatBank's credit rating stays higher than Ukraine's credit rating. The international rating agency Moody's Investors Service reported this after revising ratings of the largest Ukrainian banks. In particular, PrivatBank's standalone credit assessment assigned at b2 is one notch above Ukraine's sovereign rating (B3).

This, according to Moody's analysts, reflects PrivatBank’s conservative risk management policy of sovereign investments with lack of direct and indirect investments in government bonds, moderate level of business diversification outside of Ukraine and limited dependence on wholesale debt markets.

As stated in the Agency's release, the review of banks’ ratings is not related to the results of their activities and is a technical procedure dictated by the global methodology of assessing financial institutions. According to this methodology, the individual credit ratings of most banks in the world should be capped by the sovereign rating of the country which they are domiciled in. Only in certain cases banks’ ratings can overcome the sovereign rating of the country.

It should be reminded that on December 5th, 2012 Moody's announced the downgrade of Ukraine’s government bonds - from "B2" to "B3" with a negative outlook.

Ratings of PrivatBank are revised at:

BFSR and standalone credit assessment: E+/b2

Long-term local-currency deposit rating: B2

Long-term foreign-currency senior unsecured debt rating: B3

Long-term foreign-currency subordinated debt rating: B3

National Scale Rating (NSR): A3.ua