The Impact of Sovereign Credit Signals on Bank Share Prices during the European Sovereign Debt Crisis

The ongoing financial crisis has drawn attention to the role of credit rating agencies (CRAs). We investigate the relative impacts of sovereign actions by different CRAs on the share prices of major European banks during the financial crisis. We examine how bank abnormal returns are affected by sovereign rating changes, watch and outlook announcements, to capture how the crisis spills over across countries and from the sovereign to the financial sector. We find that CRAs’ signals affect share prices, although there is no evidence that CRA actions are the dominant force leading to falling share prices during the crisis.