Contrary to our previous expectations, we believe NCG Banco (NCG) has not taken advantage of the ECB's Long-Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO) to rebalance its liquidity position and reduce its reliance on central bank funding, which we expect to remain at relatively high levels. We are lowering our long-term counterparty credit rating on NCG to 'B' from 'B+' as we are removing our one notch of uplift for short-term government support of liquidity. The stable outlook balances our view of the potential decrease in extraordinary government support with our expectations that NCG's risk profile could improve toward the sector average in Spain over the medium term. MADRID (Standard&Poor's) July 29, 2014--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that it
