NEW YORK (S&P Global Ratings) Dec. 8, 2016--S&P Global Ratings said today that it has reviewed its recovery and issue-level ratings for Charter Communications Inc. that were labeled as "under criteria observation" (UCO) after publishing its revised recovery ratings criteria on Dec. 7, 2016. With our criteria review complete, we are removing the UCO designation from these ratings and are lowering all of Charter's secured debt ratings to 'BBB-' from 'BBB' because we now cap issue ratings for speculative-grade issuers (other than regulated utilities and real estate firms) at 'BBB-', regardless of our recovery rating. This change deemphasizes the weight recovery plays in the up-notching issue ratings for issuers near the investment-grade threshold, since recovery is a smaller component of
