Has Rabo's Safety Rating been downgraded

I read in the latest You and Your Money magazine that Rabobank's Standard and Poor's rating is A- yet their website is still saying AAA and previous threads here also stated it was AAA rated.

Which rating is correct?

I would think that Rabobank is more accurate than a magazine.

It is a very safe bank and if there was any change to its credit rating, it would have got big publicity.

Brendan

[broken link removed]

I thought so myself but I would of expected more from Eddie Hobb's magazine. People look to him for all things financial so if his mag says A- people will believe it. I wouldn't say Rabo will be too happy about it.

Standandpoors European website
Rabobank USA Financial Corp. --/--/A-1+ --/--/A-1+
Rabohypotheekbank N.V. AAA/Stable/-- AAA/Stable/--

(It looks like the US arm of rabobank is rated A-1, but the Dutch arm, Rabobak NV under which the international operations including Rabobank.ie live are AAA?).

Edit: it is not clear to me if Rabohypotheekbank is the main Dutch rabobank, or just the mortgage bank...
Edit again - just realised A-1 for Rabobank USA is actually the highest rating for foreign curency transactions!

Here's something that makes it a bit clearer: (?!)
S&P report on rabobank.co.nz
Mind you, it is dated Sep 2005.

Rabobank continues to maintain its AAA ratings from Standard & Poor's, Moodys and the Dominion Bond Rating Service (DBRS). Please see this link from the Investor relations section of the Rabobank.com website for more information on our [broken link removed].

Moody's (since 1981), Standard and Poor's (since 1981) and DBRS (since 2001) all give Rabobank a Triple A credit rating, Global Finance currently ranks Rabobank 3rd in its survey of “the world’s safest banks,” and SAM (Sustainable Asset Management Group) gave Rabobank in 2005 the highest “sustainable cluster score” for banks in all categories: economic, environmental and social.

Rabobank is the only AAA rated deposit taker in Ireland. RaboDirect is part of Rabobank and therefore is AAA rated.

RaboDirect