Groupama chief blasts Standard & Poor's after downgrade

Francois-Xavier Boisseau was left fuming following S&P's downgrade of Groupama S.A.from BBB- to BB, a move which has thrown the health of its UK subsidiary into the spotlight once again.

But Mr Boisseau told Insurance Age that the UK arm had previously had a request rejected by S&P to have its operations rated separately.

Describing the situation as "frustrating" Mr Boisseau said: "We discovered it's a very dogmatic approach by the rating agency, they don't want to give a rating to the