PARIS (Standard&Poor's) Dec. 4, 2006--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that it has affirmed the corporate credit ratings on four Dutch utilities: Delta N.V. (A+/Negative/--), N.V. ENECO (A/Negative/A-1), Essent N.V. (A+/Negative/A-1), and N.V. NUON (A+/Negative/A-1), and their related entities. The outlook on all is negative. At the same time, all ratings were removed from CreditWatch, where they had been placed with negative implications on April 28, 2006. The rating actions follow a Dutch parliament vote to accept a motion of amendments, which suspends the law in favor of splitting Dutch utilities between competitive generation and supply operations on the one hand and regulated network activities on the other. "The motion of amendments removes the immediate threat of
