NEW YORK (Standard&Poor's) March 15, 2013--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services announced today that it is withdrawing its recovery ratings on all speculative-grade sovereign and international public finance loans and debt issues. In the future, we may provide commentary on recovery prospects for certain sovereign and international public finance debt in selective cases where we believe our views would be of particular interest to investors. We have revised our issue-level ratings on one issuer, The Republic of Costa Rica, as a result of these recovery rating withdrawals. The recovery rating on Costa Rica's senior unsecured debt was previously '2', indicating our expectation of substantial (70% to 90%) recovery for debtholders in the event of a payment default. As per
