Fitch Teleconference: Latin American Sovereign Outlook 2008

Fitch Teleconference: Latin American Sovereign Outlook 2008 10 Jan 2008 4:55 PM (EST) Fitch Ratings-New York-10 January 2008: On Monday, Jan. 14, 2007 at 11 a.m., Fitch Ratings will host a teleconference on its Latin America Sovereign Outlook for 2008. Senior Director Shelly Shetty will lead the call, along with Associate Director Erich Arispe, both of Fitch's Latin America Sovereign Group. Shetty will address Fitch's report, 'Latin American Sovereign Outlook 2008', while Arispe will speak in detail about a special report titled 'Diverging Credit Profiles: A Tale of Two Americas'. Both reports are available on the Fitch Ratings web site, 'www.fitchratings.com'. Latin America's economic performance will continue to be relatively healthy with regional growth forecast to reach over 4% in 2008, driven by still robust growth in domestic demand, continued fiscal impulse in some countries, and broadly stable terms of trade, which will offset to some extent weakness in external demand emanating from the slowdown in U.S. and world growth. However, Fitch believes that decoupling of the region from the U.S. has its limits due to the growing trade and financial links between them. According to Shetty, 'to a large extent financial and real economy decoupling from the U.S. and other developed markets, in the wake of the recent credit crunch, would depend on policy choices made by Latin American sovereigns, with policy mistakes likely to have much more severe consequences than before due to the less benign external backdrop.' To participate in the teleconference, interested parties should call +1-866-529-2924 five minutes prior to the 11 a.m. start time and give conference ID number '30936925', the title of the call, 'Latin America Sovereign Outlook' or the call leader name 'Shelly Shetty.' For international participants, the dial-in number is +1-706-634-4949. To ensure there are sufficient telephone lines available, use internal conferencing capabilities, if possible, for multiple listeners at a single location. A replay of the teleconference will be available starting Monday, January 14 at 12:00 p.m. ET until February 14 at 11:59 p.m. ET. To listen to the teleconference replay, U.S. participants should call +1-800-642-1687. Participants outside the U.S. should call +1-706-645-9291. The conference ID number for the replay is '30936925'. Additionally, the teleconference will be archived on the Fitch Ratings web site. Interested parties can find the appropriate link at 'www.fitchratings.com'. Click on the 'Fitch Events' button, and then on 'Teleconferences' to find the call information. Media Relations: Christopher Kimble, New York, Tel: +1 212-908-0226. Fitch's rating definitions and the terms of use of such ratings are available on the agency's public site, 'www.fitchratings.com'. Published ratings, criteria and methodologies are available from this site, at all times. Fitch's code of conduct, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, affiliate firewall, compliance and other relevant policies and procedures are also available from the 'Code of Conduct' section of this site.