(Bloomberg News) Standard & Poor's Ratings Services lowered its credit quality ratings on 73 funds that hold U.S. debt after downgrading the nation's long-term rating for the first time.
The portfolios include fixed-income funds, exchange-traded funds, hedge funds, as well as local government investment pools and unit investment trusts, New York-based Standard & Poor's said today in a statement. The company cut the ratings by as much as two notches for the funds, 70 of which previously had the highest rating of "AAAf," S&P said.
The list of funds that had their ratings downgraded include those sold by firms such as Federated Investors Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and government pools such as the City of Anaheim in California. Certain ETFs sold by BlackRock Inc. and State Street Corp. were also affected.
S&P said it lowered the ratings on 73 of 206 funds managed in the U.S., Europe and Bermuda because of their "significant exposures," greater than 50 percent to direct or indirect investments, in U.S. Treasury and U.S. government agency securities.