LONDON (Standard&Poor's) Aug. 31, 2011--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that it had assigned its 'AA' long-term and 'A-1+' short-term issue ratings to the US$20 billion U.S. commercial paper (CP) program of HSBC Bank PLC (HBEU; AA/Stable/A-1+). The ratings reflect the fact that the program's notes will constitute direct, unsecured, and unsubordinated obligations of HBEU and rank at least equally with all the bank's other unsecured and unsubordinated obligations, except those mandatorily preferred by applicable law. They also reflect the fact that the bank may issue notes with a maturity up to 397 days. Under our criteria for rating U.S. CP issued by offshore banks, we note the same-day settlement norm in the U.S. CP market and
