"This is not a credit-watch situation where we have to act quickly"
- Moritz Kraemer, head of sovereign ratings
The Standard's & Poor's became the third of the major credit rating agencies, which put the U.K.'s top AAA rating on "negative outlook". The agency also said it can lower nation's credit rating in case fiscal performance will weaken beyond their current expectations. Moreover, they said there is a one-in-three chance that they would strip the U.K. of its cherished AAA status within the next two years. On Thursday, the S&P said that Britain's ratio of debt to GDP will keep rising in 2015 and reach its peak at 92%, also saying it could reach 100%, if the economic recovery is weaker than currently predicted.
"This is not a credit-watch situation where we have to act quickly," Moritz Kraemer, head of sovereign ratings in Frankfurt, said on Friday. "If we had an opinion that the downgrade is a foregone conclusion we would have done it this week. But we just tried to signal that risk is to the downside and there's no immediate action to be expected."
"We continue to believe that government's efforts over the next few years to engineer the planned correction in the UK's fiscal accounts will likely drag on economic growth," S&P.
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