We believe that BTG has maintained its leading position as the largest investment bank in Latin America. Despite economic slump in Brazil and an expected decline in profitability, the bank has been successfully implementing its business plan. In addition, we believe that BTG has further improved its liquidity position in the past 12 months. We now consider that the bank has enough liquid assets to meet its short-term obligations without any extraordinary support. As a result, we're affirming our 'BB-/B' global scale and 'brA+/brA-1' national scale ratings on the bank. The negative outlook on BTG reflects our view of the negative economic and industry risk trend in our Banking Industry Country Risk Assessment (BICRA) on Brazil. We believe the bank's
