S&P Publishes Report Card On Top 10 Economic Centers

The world's top 10 economic centers allhave investment-grade credit ratings, reflecting the importance of economicperformance as a key factor when evaluating local governmentcreditworthiness, according to a first-ever Report Card, "The World's Top10 Economic Centers," published today by Standard & Poor's.

A strong, dynamic, and diversified economy often correlates with robustand growing tax revenues with positive implications on a government'sfinancial flexibility and budgetary performance, the report notes.

Standard & Poor's selected the "top 10" economic centers based on:

• the economic importance of the countries in which they are located (all of which are G8 members);
• their role as the major economic center(s) in their respective country;
• the depth of the services that they provide as well as the economic importance that each city provides to its respective service area and to the country as a whole; and
• their size (each has at least 1 million inhabitants).

Based on these criteria, the top 10 rated economic centers are:

• City of Paris (AAA/Stable/--);
• Greater London Authority (AA+/Stable/--);
• City of Los Angeles(AA/Stable/--);
• City of Madrid (AA/Stable/A-1+);
• City of Toronto (AA/Stable/A-1+);
• City of Yokohama (AA-/Positive/--);
• City of Chicago (AA-/Stable/--);
• City of New York (AA-/Stable/--);
• City of Milan (A+/Stable/--);
• City of Moscow (BBB+/Stable/--);

The Report Card discusses how each of these cities is performing inregard to revenues and spending. Data are provided to enable the cities tobe compared by a variety of economic and financial statistics. The major credit-related strengths, weaknesses, and outlook are provided for each as well. In addition, they are ranked by GDP per capita, revenues per capita, relative level of capital expenditures, and unemployment rate.