LONDON (Standard&Poor's) Aug. 3, 2012--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services today said it has taken rating actions on 32 Italian financial institutions. These include affirming our counterparty credit ratings on 15 entities, lowering our ratings on 15, removing the ratings on four from CreditWatch negative, and revising the outlook on one. The rating actions reflect our view of increased credit risk for the Italian economy and its banks. They follow our revision of our economic risk score for Italy, one of the main components of our Banking Industry Country Risk Assessment (BICRA), to '5' from '4'. We have maintained our BICRA for Italy at group '4' and our industry risk score at '4' (see "BICRA On Italy Maintained At