LONDON (Standard&Poor's) Aug. 30, 2007--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that its ratings on Barclays Bank PLC (Barclays; AA/Stable/A-1+) are not affected by recent reports concerning exposures to Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs). Our ratings on Barclays benefit from its broad and diversified range of businesses and are not expected to be affected by its other exposures to specialist funding vehicles, notably its U.S. ABCP programs, or its activities in the RMBS and leveraged finance markets. That said, if the current heavily discounted valuations of even highly rated MBS persist, banks and broker-dealers including Barclays could face substantial mark-to-market losses. Fair-value accounting will likely make such losses more visible than might have been the case historically. Standard&
