The credit agency announced its decision yesterday, warning that the UK had "very limited fiscal space to absorb further adverse economic shocks in light of such elevated debt levels and a potentially weaker than currently forecast economic recovery".
This move means there is a "slightly greater than 50% chance" that Britain will lose its AAA rating with Fitch in the next two years.
There was better news for Greece, with Fitch upgrading its rating to B- and adding a stable outlook following last week's debt restructuring deal.
Elsewhere, Moody's downgraded its rating for Cyprus to Ba1 - junk status - and gave it a negative outlook. The credit agency also took its rating for Greece down from Ca to C.
In February, the UK had the outlook on its Aaa Moody's rating changed to negative in a range of adjustments by the major credit agency including downgrades for Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia and Spain.
At that time, Moody's also announced France and Austria would share the same fate as the UK with their outlooks being changed to negative.
The recent rating adjustments from Moody's echo the mass downgrade of nine eurozone countries by Standard & Poor's which saw France stripped of its coveted AAA credit last month. S&P also cut Austria's triple-A rating, and relegated Portugal and Cyprus to junk status. The agency downgraded the ratings of Italy and Spain by two notches and Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia were all cut by one notch.
Last August, America lost its AAA rating when S&P downgraded it to AA+, despite a deal being drawn to raise the US debt ceiling.
Earlier last year, Moody's re-assessed the credit ratings of several countries. Ireland had its credit rating slashed last year, down two notches to Baa3 - leaving it at just above junk status, with the verdict being delivered as the euro dropped against the dollar.
Source URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/apr/30/credit-ratings-country-fitch-moodys-standard#data
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