Monolines Ambac Assurance Corp and MBIA Insurance Corp, the two largest bond insurers, on Thursday night had their triple-A ratings cut by Standard & Poor’s, but the news did not cause a massive sell-off in the market as feared.
S&P announced that it was cutting the ratings for the monoline businesses by two notches from the top rating to “AA”. The ratings on the holding companies, Ambac Financial Group Inc and MBIA Inc were also lowered to “A” and “A-” respectively from “AA” and “AA-”. Both companies were left on negative watch for possible further downgrades.
