Fitch Downgrades Slew Of Banks, Including Goldman, BofA

Fitch Ratings announced ratings actions on nine major global banks today and among those moves were lower ratings for Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS).

Fitch did the following downgrades for BofA, the Wall Street Journal noted:

–Long-term IDR downgraded to ‘A' from ‘A+'; –Short-term IDR downgraded to ‘F1′ from ‘F1+'; –Viability Rating downgraded to ‘bbb+' from ‘a-'. For Goldman, the Fitch ratings now look like this:

–Long-term IDR downgraded to ‘A' from ‘A+'; –Short-term IDR downgraded to ‘F1′ from ‘F1+'; –Viability Rating downgraded to ‘a' from ‘a+'.

Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) saw its viability rating downgraded as did Barclays (NYSE: BCS), BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank (NYSE: DB), Credit Suisse (NYSE: CS), UBS (NYSE: UBS) and Societe Generale.

“Fitch expects market volatility to remain above historical averages and economic growth in developed markets to remain subdued for a prolonged period. This makes many business lines in securities operations more difficult, due to lower activity and higher funding costs,” Fitch said in its report.