Sovereign Rating Calendar
Date of last update: April 4th, 2022
Legal background
The last amendment of the EU Regulation on Credit Rating Agencies ("CRA III"or "CRA Regulation" going forward) entered into force on June 20th, 2013. CRA III introduced a number of specific requirements in the Sovereign market:
- review of sovereign ratings every 6 months
- publication of a calendar by the end of each year for rating actions on sovereigns during the next year.
A "Sovereign rating is defined in Article 3 (1) v of the CRA Regulation. “sovereign rating” means:
(i) a credit rating where the entity rated is a State or a regional or local authority of a State;
(ii) a credit rating where the issuer of the debt or financial obligation, debt security or other financial instrument is a State or a regional or local authority of a State, or a special purpose vehicle of a State or of a regional or local authority;
(iii) a credit rating where the issuer is an international financial institution established by two or more States which has the purpose of mobilising funding and providing financial assistance for the benefit of the members of that international financial institution which are experiencing or threatened by severe financing problems;
Article 8a "Sovereign ratings" of the CRA Regulation introducces the Sovereign Calendar:
3. A credit rating agency shall, taking into consideration the second subparagraph of Article 8(5), publish on its website and submit to ESMA on an annual basis, in accordance with point 3 of Part III of Section D of Annex I, a calendar at the end of December for the following 12 months, setting a maximum of three dates for the publication of unsolicited sovereign ratings and related rating outlooks and setting the dates for the publication of solicited sovereign ratings and related rating outlooks. Such dates shall be set on a Friday.
4. Deviation of the publication of sovereign ratings or related rating outlooks from the calendar shall only be possible where necessary for the credit rating agency to comply with its obligations under Article 8(2), Article 10(1) and Article 11(1) and shall be accompanied by a detailed explanation of the reasons for the deviation from the announced calendar.
According to Article 3 (1) x , “unsolicited sovereign rating” mean (...) a sovereign rating assigned by a credit rating agency other than upon request; "
According to Article 8 (5), ‘Sovereign ratings shall be reviewed at least every six months.’;
2022 Sovereign calendar
Overview
While 26 CRAs are currently registered or certified with ESMA, 13 CRAs are active in the broader Sovereign market, which includes also the Sub-Sovereign level. JCRA from Japan and Egan-Jones Rating Company from the US are both rating sovereigns - these two are certified with ESMA and do not publish sovereign calendars.
The 11 remaining CRAs registered with ESMA are: Axesor Rating ("Axesor"), Bulgarian Credit Rating Agency ("BCRA"), Capital Intelligence ("CI"), Creditreform Rating AG ("CRAG"), DBRS, ExpertRA, Fitchratings ("Fitch"), Kroll Bond Rating Agency - Europe ("KBRA"), Moodys Investors Services ("Moodys"), Scope Ratings ("Scope") and Standard and Poors ("S&P).
In addition, the Economist Intelligence Unit ("EIU"), which is registered with the UK FCA as CRA, also publishd a sovereign rating calendar.
the graph below sumaarizes the number of rating actions scheduled during 2022. As can be seen, a cnostant flow of information on sovereigns will be available during the year.
The graph below outlines how EU Member States are covered by these rating agencies and the time beetween the rating actions:
Scheduled updates
Based on our research dated December 31st, 2021, the table below summarizes the scheduled sovereign rating reeviews for April 2022:
The sovereign ratings by Scope Ratings are available following this link.
If you wish to receive the calendar for the full year, please visit this page