VATICAN CITY
IR Magazine
November 26, 2015 | By Clare Harrison
Bank benefits from robust stewardship of de facto non-exec chair Pope Francis
New York – Croody’s today upgrades the foreign currency long-term deposit rating of the Vatican Bank (formally known as the Institute for Religious Works) to BBB+ status.
Croody’s typically retrospective grading reflects the following key drivers:
1) Initiation of a careful process to reverse historical ‘light-touch’ approach to tax evasion, mafia drug money laundering and fraud, while protecting economic and financial stability
2) Improvements to governance and transparency initiated by non-executive director Pope Francis, the 266th pope of the Catholic Church
3) Expectation of further improvement in the bank’s earnings over the next three to four years.
Summary
The bank, which has an estimated $8 bn in assets, has benefited from the more robust stewardship in the form of its de facto non-executive chairman Pope Francis. The pontiff’s non-deal US roadshow at the end of Q3 2015 came on the back of stellar earnings growth (20x) the previous year and underlines management improvements at the bank.
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