OREANDA-NEWS. S&P Global Ratings said today that it had revised its outlooks on 11 Russia-related financial institutions to stable from negative following its similar action on the sovereign. The counterparty credit ratings on the financial institutions were also affirmed. See the ratings list below for the specific rating actions on each entity.

RATIONALE

Government-Related Entities

We revised our outlooks and affirmed the ratings on the following government-related entities (GREs) and members of GRE groups. The revision reflects the somewhat stabilizing economic environment in Russia and the government's capacity to provide timely and sufficient extraordinary support to these GREs.

VTB Bank JSC (BB+/Stable/B) The outlook on VTB Bank JSC reflects that on Russia.

We equalize the ratings and outlooks on the following core VTB group members with those on VTB Bank JSC:VTB-Leasing (BB+/Stable/B)VTB-Leasing Finance (BB+/Stable/B)VTB Capital PLC (BB+/Stable/B)VTB Insurance Ltd. (BB+/Stable/--)

The following banks have high strategic importance to the VTB group, and we rate these group members one notch below VTB Bank JSC. VTB Bank (Kazakhstan) (BB/Stable/B)VTB Bank (Deutschland) AG (BB/Stable/B)

MEMBERS OF LARGE FOREIGN GROUPS OPERATING IN RUSSIA

We revised our outlooks and affirmed our ratings on the following members of large foreign groups that operate in Russia because of our view of somewhat reducing pressure from the sovereign rating and reflecting the application of our criteria (see "Ratings Above The Sovereign--Corporate And Government Ratings: Methodology And Assumptions," published Nov. 19, 2013), given that all of them are exposed predominantly to the Russian market. We continue to cap the long - and short-term ratings on these entities at the level of our foreign currency sovereign ratings on Russia (BB+/Stable/B):BNP PARIBAS BANK JSC (BB+/Stable/B)AO UniCredit Bank (BB+/Stable/B)Bank ICBC JSC (BB+/Stable/B)Credit Suisse Securities (Moscow) Ltd. (BB+/Stable/B) The outlooks on all these entities are now stable, mirroring the outlook on the sovereign.