LONDON (Standard&Poor's) Oct. 5, 2007--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that its ratings on Barclays Bank PLC (Barclays; AA/Stable/A-1+) are not affected by Barclays' announcement today that its bid for Netherlands-based ABN AMRO Bank N.V. (ABN AMRO; AA-/Watch Pos/A-1+) has been withdrawn. Standard&Poor's considers Barclays to be a diverse institution in its current form, with expectations of continued strong profitable growth and stable capitalization. Under Barclays' revised bid, capital targets were lowered back to pre-bid levels. These targets are expected to remain in place, making capitalization a relative weakness compared with global peers. While the acquisition would have provided further diversity to Barclays--particularly in geographic terms--we consider that there was significant integration risk to the
