Reuters reported that Standard & Poor's reduced its credit ratings on fifteen large banking companies, mostly in the Europe and the United States, on Tuesday as the result of a sweeping overhaul of its ratings criteria.

According the report, banks that had their ratings reduced by one notch each included JPMorgan Chase & Co, Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Barclays Plc, HSBC Holdings Plc, Royal Bank of Scotland AAHAUS.UL Group Plc and UBS AG. A notch is one third of a letter rating.

S&P also left the ratings of twenty banks as they were and raised the ratings of two in announcing results from its new ratings criteria for thirty seven of the world's biggest banking companies. The agency also updated ratings for dozens of bank subsidiaries of the companies.

The two banks which received higher ratings are Bank of China Ltd and China Construction Bank Corp.  Ratings on both rose to A from A-minus.

As reported, the outcome of the re-rating of the biggest banks was worse than S&P has forecast for all banks. S&P officials said earlier this month they expected about 20% of all banks would see their ratings drop, while 20% would get higher ratings and 60% would stay the same.