Rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) has modified its subsidiaries rating method in order to reflect the changing business marketplace.
It says this follows a review of its criteria governing the ratings of members of financial services groups.
The way the method has changed is that S&P has introduced a cap on the ratings of operations that are not explicitly `core' to the group.
This will mean that ratings on subsidiaries cannot normally be more than one `notch' (e.g. BBB compared to BBB-) below the ratings assigned to the core operations in the same group.
For more information visit www.standardandpoors.com.
