S & P pesante con GROUPAMA
TEXT-S&P places Groupama S.A. 'BBB+' ratings on creditwatch negative
Reuters - 13/09/2011 15:09:22
(The following statement was released by the rating agency)
Sept 13- In our view, adverse and volatile capital markets may be weakening
Groupama's financial profile, in particular the group's capital adequacy.
-- We are placing our 'BBB+' long-term ratings on CreditWatch with
negative implications.
-- We are also placing our 'BBB-' hybrid ratings on CreditWatch with
negative implications.
Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said today that it has placed its 'BBB+' long-term counterparty credit and insurer financial strength ratings on France-based composite insurer Groupama S.A. on CreditWatch with negative implications. At the same time, we placed the 'BBB-' ratings on the group's hybrid notes on CreditWatch with negative implications.
We also placed the long- and short-term 'BBB/A-2' counterparty credit ratings
on Groupama's wholly owned banking arm, Groupama Banque, on CreditWatch with
negative implications.
The rating action reflects our perception that adverse capital market
conditions may be weakening Groupama's financial profile.
In our view, the recent negative capital market developments might have
further undermined Groupama's already weak and volatile capital adequacy. Furthermore, we believe management has not so far taken action to
significantly reduce this volatility. In particular, we understand that
Groupama has not yet started its planned derisking of its equity exposure,
which stood at 16% of total investments at year-end 2010. In addition, we
believe that Groupama's credit risk has increased because of the group's
sizable exposure to sovereign bonds, in particular those of Greece
(CC/Negative/C) and Portugal (BBB-/Negative/A-3), which represented 7.8% and
3.3% of the group's shareholder's funds on June 30, 2011, after taxes and
profit sharing.
Furthermore, we note that Groupama's financial flexibility is limited by its
capacity for issuing additional hybrid capital and by the likely cost of
raising such capital.
Standard & Poor's expects to resolve the CreditWatch placement next week, once
we have reassessed the elements supporting Groupama's ratings. In particular,
we are reassessing the impact of the capital markets downturn on Groupama's
capital adequacy. If we determine that the downturn has significantly reduced
capital adequacy, we could lower the ratings on Groupama by up to two notches,
based on our current view.