On Nov. 9, 2010, Bimbo announced an agreement to acquire Sara Lee's fresh bakery business for $959 million, in a transaction we expect will complete in third-quarter 2011. We are affirming our ratings, including the 'BBB' global scale and 'mxAA+' national scale corporate credit ratings, on Bimbo and removing the ratings from CreditWatch, where we placed them with negative implications at the time of the announcement. The outlook is negative. We view the company's debt as being higher than we expected amid its acquisitive growth strategy, and we are concerned that its deleveraging could take longer than we had anticipated. MEXICO CITY (Standard&Poor's) July 12, 2011--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that it affirmed its ratings, including