Following a review under Standard&Poor's revised bank criteria (published on Nov. 9, 2011), we lowered our long-term counterparty credit ratings on Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. Ltd. (HSBC Asia Pacific) on Nov. 29, 2011 to 'AA-' from 'AA'. The outlook is stable. At the same time, we affirmed the 'A-1+' short-term counterparty credit rating. The long-term rating on HSBC Asia Pacific benefits from one notch of uplift for our view of potential extraordinary government support for the bank in a crisis and its status as a core subsidiary of HSBC Holdings PLC. The stable outlook reflects our view that HSBC Asia Pacific will continue to have "high systemic importance" in Hong Kong and remain a core subsidiary of
