Het is zo ver: S&P is het eerste ratingbureau dat de kredietbeoordeling van Griekenland verlaagt naar D (Default). Oftewel, de Grieken zijn in faling op hun schulden!

LONDON (Standard & Poor’s) Feb. 27, 2012–Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said today that it has lowered its ‘CC’ long-term and ‘C’ short-term sovereign credit ratings on the Hellenic Republic (Greece) to ‘SD’ (selective default). Our recovery rating of ‘4’ on Greece’s foreign-currency issue ratings is unchanged. Our country transfer and convertibility (T&C) assessment for Greece, as for all other eurozone members, remains ‘AAA’. We lowered our sovereign credit ratings on Greece to ‘SD’ following the Greek government’s retroactive insertion of collective action clauses (CACs) in the documentation of certain series of its sovereign debt on Feb. 23, 2012. The effect of a CAC is to bind all bondholders of a particular series to amended bond payment terms in the event that a predefined quorum of creditors has agreed to do so. In our opinion, Greece’s retroactive insertion of CACs materially changes the original terms of the affected debt and constitutes the launch of what we consider to be a distressed debt restructuring. Under our criteria, either condition is grounds for us to lower our sovereign credit rating on Greece to ‘SD’ and our ratings on the affected debt issues to ‘D’.