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Fitch London Credit Outlook Conference Highlights

Fitch Ratings-London-12 December 2013: Fitch Ratings' annual series of European credit outlook events returns to London today, with a combination of presentations and panel discussion focussed on the question: Why is Funding The Key to Recovery?


Below are some highlight quotes from today's presentations.

Sovereigns: "On the back of a fragile economic recovery and more settled financial market conditions in the eurozone, the sovereign credit outlook is slowly stabilising. The focus is shifting away from immediate concerns such as systemic tail risks and external solvency toward longer term issues including public debt levels and reform agendas to stimulate growth. A number of eurozone sovereigns remain on Negative Outlook, however, underscoring the challenges ahead," says James McCormack, Fitch's Global Head of Sovereign Ratings.

"In Emerging Markets, the growth outlook is clouded by lower commodity prices and certain country-specific structural impediments. Moreover, the Fed tapering will put pressure on external funding conditions, although we don't expect any ratings to be under threat from the tapering alone. Many Emerging Market sovereigns have spent a decade or more improving public and external balances," McCormack added.

Banks: "In addition to a still tough economic environment which is keeping sector profitability and credit demand in many European countries low, banks are wading through many regulatory challenges. Loan growth is unlikely to resume in earnest until the regulations are finalised. The ECB's comprehensive assessment exercise means continuing to build capital is likely to be the key area of attention for many euro area banks in 2014," said Bridget Gandy Co-Head of EMEA Banks at Fitch. "Beyond this, the earnings challenge from a low interest rate environment is likely to keep the sector outlook stable even when some positive economic momentum starts to come through."

Corporates: "Corporate default risk is still low generally and what downgrades we are likely to see next year will predominantly be very modest, both in scale and breadth - driven by company specific issues rather than sector trends. The overall pattern, however, of a drip feed of downgrades outpacing the even more occasional upgrade, will remain until we see a return to stronger growth in Europe," said Richard Hunter, Head of EMEA & APAC Corporates at Fitch.

"We believe company boards are likely to remain very cautious about preserving their financial strength through 2014 and expect this to be reflected in a continued conservative approach to what levels of M&A activity there are," Hunter added.

Insurance: "Despite expected downward pressure on European insurers' earnings in 2014 as a result of the continuing low interest rate environment, we expect the industry to remain resilient with strong balance sheets, and good technical profitability," says Chris Waterman, Fitch's EMEA Head of Insurance.

Structured Finance: "Policy makers across Europe are debating how to stimulate their economies and SME lending is a big focus. They are looking to securitisation techniques to fund the SME sector. From a credit risk perspective SME securitisations have performed well throughout the credit crisis and loss expectations on Fitch's SME CLO ratings portfolio are less than 1%," said Marjan van der Weijden, Fitch's Head of EMEA Structured Finance.

"However, potential investors in this asset class are looking for a higher return then the underlying assets are yielding making the transactions uneconomical. State related guarantees or participations could be a solution to narrow that gap," van der Weijden added.

Global Infrastructure: "The outlook for European infrastructure remains mostly stable, although there are still significant pockets of negative outlooks in some sectors. However, in many of these cases the situations have eased slightly since last year," said Dan Robertson, Fitch's EMEA Head of Global Infrastructure.

"The main factors supporting the stable outlooks are many infrastructure assets are supported by long term contracts or proven regulatory regimes; oil prices remain high supporting oil and gas producers and; transportation traffic in northern Europe has achieved modest but consistent growth in recent years," Robertson added.

In addition to London today, our credit outlook event series includes Paris (11 December) and Madrid (22 January) and Frankfurt (23 January).

Key topics include: Key Rating Drivers for 2014; Sovereign Overview: Global Growth and Funding; How Will Regulatory Considerations Affect Bank Lending In 2014? Will Banks Grow Loan Books in 2014 or Will Deleveraging Continue? Europe's Economies Need Credit. - If Banks Won't Supply it Who Will? Why a Eurozone recovery - and not emerging markets - will drive growth in Europe.

Additional information is available at fitchratings.com


Mardi 17 Décembre 2013




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