Running on Empty
June 4, 2008 – 4:04 amFitch Ratings actually said an unkind word about a company before it goes on life support, two companies actually.
BNP Paribas SA and Societe Generale SA said they have adequate capital after a Fitch Ratings presentation indicated France’s largest banks may need to raise more money.`
`Barclays and BNP and Societe Generale are clearly running on very thin capital ratios,” Krishnan Ramadurai, a managing director at Fitch’s financial institutions group, said at a conference in Tokyo today. “A number of them need to come to the capital markets to raise capital.”
Oh no not I said BNP Paribas we have lots of cash.
“We don’t understand the interpretation made of Fitch’s presentation,” BNP Paribas spokeswoman Celine Castex wrote in an e-mail today. Fitch said in an April 11 report that BNP Paribas’s Tier 1 ratio, a measure of capital strength, was “satisfactory,” BNP Paribas said.
Sound familiar, does to us too and even Fitch ain’t buyin a bit of it.
“Fitch confirmed to us today that their opinion had not changed,”
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