Hamilton City Council achieves a AA-

Fitch Ratings has assigned New Zealand's Hamilton City Council a 'AA-' long-term rating with a stable outlook.

Hamilton is one of New Zealand's largest cities and has an aggressive 10-year infrastructure investment plan. The Council's debt level is currently low but is expected to rise to a more moderate level, according to the Council's 10-year financial plan, as new and infill development result in increased infrastructure investments.

While this poses some exposure to budgetary performance from rising debt service costs, Fitch expects the current economic and financial climate to moderate the pace of development and related borrowing.

GPT Group's announced plan to exit the European component of its joint venture with Babcock & Brown will not impact the Baa2/P-2 ratings or the stable outlook assigned by Moody's. The exit is within Moody's expectation and is incorporated in the ratings.

The long-term rating could take on an upward bias if GPT demonstrates ongoing stability in its operating platform and financial strategy, along with continued ability to access the capital markets over the next 12-18 months.

In the past GPT has been a prolific issuer in the domestic bond market but currently has only A$225 million of November 2010 bonds and A$212 million of August 2013 bonds outstanding.

After more than seven months of consideration, Fitch has affirmed the 'AA-' long-term issuer default rating assigned to Deutsche Bank and removed the rating from Rating Watch Negative. Also affirmed was the short-term 'F1+' rating and the 'B/C' individual rating. A negative rating outlook was assigned, reflecting Fitch's view that the global operating environment for banks will remain difficult for some time yet.

The affirmation of Deutsche Bank's ratings follows the bank's 28 July announcement of first half 2009 results, as the group reported income of €3.1 billion before taxes and net income of €2.3 billion. This marks a strong recovery from the 2008 net loss of €3.9 billion, which was due to trading and revaluation losses, costs of exposure reduction and provisions against monoline insurers.

The Sydney branch of Deutsche Bank has A$1.85 billion of bonds outstanding in the domestic market with maturities out to October 2012.