Moody’s upgrades BoC, Hellenic one notch

Moody’s Investors Service on Wednesday upgraded, by one notch, the long term local and foreign currency deposit ratings of Bank of Cyprus to Caa2, and Hellenic Bank to Caa1, and affirmed their not-prime short-term local and foreign currency deposit and commercial paper ratings.

Moody’s said its action was driven by an improved operating environment, which in turn allowed the banks’ profitability, asset quality, funding, and capitalisation to improve.

This was also the case for Cyprus’s “macro profile” assessment, which rose to weak from very weak.

Moody’s said that it expects Bank of Cyprus to fully repay its outstanding emergency central bank funding, which according to the bank’s top executive John Hourican stood at €0.4m on Tuesday, “in the coming quarters”.

“Moody’s notes that the ratings of these two banks remain at low levels, reflecting, in particular, the vulnerability of their capital buffers to the high stock of non-performing loans,” the rating company said in an emailed statement.

The long-term Caa1 deposit rating for Hellenic also incorporates “one notch of uplift from the bank’s caa2 baseline credit assessment,” Moody’s said.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.