http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15686580
Standard & Poor's accidentally released a message to some of its subscribers on Thursday saying that it had downgraded French debt from its top AAA rating.
S&P said it was investigating what had gone wrong and stressed that France still had an AAA rating.
The French market regulator AMF said it was also investigating how the error could have happened.
It came on the day that the difference between the yield of French and German bonds hit a record high.
Another ratings agency, Moody's, warned last month that France's "financial strength has weakened" and that it was "among the weakest of its AAA peers".
Moody's said it would decide within three months whether to change France's outlook from stable, indicating it was considering a downgrade.
French banks have a particularly big exposure to Greek debt.
"As a result of a technical error, a message was automatically disseminated today to some subscribers of S&P's Global Credit Portal suggesting that France's credit rating had been changed," S&P said in a statement.
I doubt that it was an accident, but it was probably not intended to be a public notification. It is likely a preview of an upcoming decision to downgrade them based on their central bank's holding of excessive Greek debt.
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