S&P lowers six Russian banks

Standard & Poor's said it lowered the long-term ratings to BBB- from BBB on the Raiffeisenbank ZAO, BNP Paribas ZAO, ZAO Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (Eurasia), ZAO Sumitomo Mitsui Rus Bank, ZAO UniCredit Bank and ZAO Industrial and Commercial bank of China (Moscow), which are all Russian banks that are foreign-owned subsidiaries of international financial groups.

The agency also downgraded the banks' short-term rating to A-3 short from A-3.

The outlooks remain negative.

The downgrades reflect similar rating actions on Russia, which reflected the risk of a continuation of the large financial outflows observed in the first quarter of 2014, S&P said.

The long-term ratings on all seven banks are capped by the BBB- long-term foreign-currency sovereign rating on Russia, the agency said.

This is because they are almost exclusively domestic players and therefore very sensitive to economic and operating conditions in Russia, S&P said.

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