OREANDA-NEWS. Fitch Ratings' annual series of Credit Outlook events returns to London today, where senior analysts from our Sovereign, Bank, Corporate and Structured Finance groups, as well as guest panellists, will discuss the key issues facing global credit markets this year. Below are some highlight quotes from today's presentations.

Global Economic and Sovereign Outlook: Fitch's View of the World
James McCormack, Global Head of Sovereign Ratings

"Growth in advanced economies is expected to be virtually unchanged, while the slight improvement in emerging markets is driven in part by smaller contractions in a few large markets such as Russia. Slowing growth in China will be a feature over the next several years."

"European policymakers will likely be focused more on political and security issues in 2016 than on fiscal discipline or economic reform, but stable debt levels and favourable market financing conditions provide a reasonably benign backdrop for sovereign credit in the region."

"Emerging market sovereigns are facing another year of dollar strength, commodity price weakness and sluggish global trade. With negative rating outlooks outnumbering positive outlooks by two-to-one across our global portfolio, rating pressures are clearly downward, especially in the Middle East and Africa."

European Bank Asset Quality - How Much Longer Will Problems Persist?
Bridget Gandy, Co-head of EMEA Financial Institutions

"EU banks are showing broadly improving asset-quality metrics stemming from a reduction in legacy non-performing loans, albeit with continuing divergence between the northern and southern banks. While new impaired loans are still outpacing recoveries and loan quality improvement in parts of the EU, most notably in Italy, the pace of deterioration is at least starting to slow even in the worst performing sectors. With stronger, more stable economies and economic prospects in Northern Europe, we expect asset quality to remain better than that for Southern European banks for some time."