Moody's Corporation

Neither an initial announcement nor a parliamentary amendment establishes the final tax position.

Meanwhile, Moody's left France's credit rating unchanged at AA3 with a negative outlook following its review on 23 October.

While the unchanged rating provides some reassurance amid concerns about public finances, the negative outlook indicates that risks remain.

French government bonds have also been sensitive to concerns about the country's fiscal position.

Today we explore how institutional investors are embracing blockchain and crypto.

On October 28th, Moody's awarded Ripple's RLSD Stablecoin an A2 investment grade rating, marking a noteworthy development for institutional use of tokenized dollar products.

Let's bring in Tallulah to break down what this means for the financial landscape.

Thanks, Matthew.

Moody's rating of RLUSD is a major step for Ripple, especially in the eyes of institutional investors.

The A2 long-term deposit rating and Prime 1 short-term grade reflect a strong credit signal, though it's important to note that these ratings are not interchangeable.

They cover different time horizons, with A2 being investment grade, but not at the very top, and Prime1 being the highest short-term rating.

And how does this rating framework apply

Now, the triggers are a 2027 budget stuck in a divided parliament, a deficit around 5% of GDP, and street protests across the country.

On Friday night, Moody's held France's credit rating at AA3 with a negative outlook, and French bonds rallied Monday.

The 10-year closed at 4.93%, back under 5.

This morning, it's back up near 495.

But Moody's says that rating assumes a deficit-cutting budget actually gets passed, and S&P reviews France's credit rating next month.

So, Sean, walk us through the number that bond traders are watching?

Yeah, the number that we need to be watching is the spread.

So it went from about 100 basis points in mid-September to around 175 up to now.

Coming up on the program today, Johannesburg's financial crisis threatens to derail even the most ambitious plans to rescue the city.

Could South Africa be heading for a credit ratings upgrade after a thumbs up from Moody's? Money worries are taking a growing toll on South Africans with financial stress, topping mental health concerns across every generation.

And South Africa's biggest brands add a staggering 230 billion rand in value in just 24 months.

But what is driving that growth? It's Tuesday 27th October.

Say, if those were working, how would I work? And then separately and in parallel, you go and create teams and leaders, probably nationally or at least provincially, who can fix, fill the tank, Fix the brakes and do all of those things so that you, the best driver, can run the fastest car.

Mark Barnes, thank you very much indeed.

Well, a welcome vote of confidence in South Africa's public finances from the international ratings agency Moody's.

It says last week's medium term budget statement is positive for the country's credit profile, pointing to tighter fiscal discipline and signs that government debt may finally have peaked.

French bonds, obviously, were a different story.

They actually turned around a little bit overnight because the Moody's, one of the big ratings agencies, said, France, you know, we're not going to downgrade your sovereign credit ratings, so things are looking a bit better.

US dollar, Aussie dollar, all looking a little bit stronger than our Kiwi at the moment.

We're pretty much, it's just the yen that we're trading fairly flat against.

Okay, so...

If we have some time, years and years ago, after the financial crisis, Moody's and S&P Global that ran the credit for bonds, right? The government said you have to open things up.

You're a monopoly.

You screwed up with the financial crisis.

You have to open things up.

Okay, they opened things up.

No one's using anything aside from Moody's and S&P Global to rate bonds.

They're opening up the credit scoring.

First, the French 10-year yield dropped below the 5% level all the way down to 4.90% yesterday despite a weekend of heavy protests in France.

Moody's surprise decision not to downgrade France's credit rating on Friday played a bigger role than the impact in French politics and the French trades.

That's because ratings do impact the collateral value of investments and the higher the rating, the bigger percentage of the value of holdings that you have could be invested elsewhere and the latter would be bringing extra returns.

So it's very important for investors and the full now stable rating for France, though with a negative outlook attached, mind you, somehow helped cooling the downside pressure in French bonds yesterday.

Forget about them because they're crap.

If you just look at some of the good ones, if you go and look at Warren Buffett's portfolio, he's got Apple, Google, Coke, American Express, Moody's, a couple of oil companies, Chevron.

They've been great companies for a long time.

Look at John D. Rockefeller's oil company, Chevron, ExxonMobil.