Vive la France!

Last week, the French government survived two motions of no confidence, mainly by promising not to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 for the time being. For S&P, however, this was reason enough to downgrade France’s credit rating from AA- to A+. It may seem like a minor detail, but for managers of fixed income funds that require at least AA-rated investments, it created an immediate problem. Did all those French government bonds suddenly need to be dumped?