The number of global bank rating upgrades halved to 15 in the third quarter, while the number of rating downgrades remained relatively unchanged at 30, Fitch Ratings reports.

The upgrades continued to be concentrated in the emerging markets while all the downgrades were on bank ratings in developed Europe (mainly Greece and Spain) and emerging Europe (mainly Belarus and Slovenia).

During the quarter, Fitch downgraded the emerging market sovereign ratings of Slovenia and Cyprus, upgraded Romania and Uruguay, and revised the rating outlooks on Ukraine, Bahrain and El Salvador. It says that these actions triggered the majority of the upgrades, downgrades and rating alert revisions for emerging bank ratings in the quarter.

Also, since the end of Q3, Fitch has taken a significant number of additional negative rating actions on banks in the developed markets. The results of that activity will show up in its fourth quarter report.

Across developed markets, rating outlooks on European banks continued to diverge from other developed market regions in the third quarter, Fitch said. Banks in developed Europe had 39 negative outlooks for every positive outlook, reflecting the agency’s expectation at end of the quarter of further negative rating action for banks in the region “resulting from challenging funding markets and the weakening economic environment these banks operate in”.

On a global basis, stable outlooks fell to 76.7% of total rating alerts, from 78.2% in the second quarter, as positive and negative outlooks increased to 8.5% (from 7.1%) and 9.4% (from 8.0%), respectively. Negative outlooks slightly outnumber positive outlooks. Although, in developed markets, banks had 5.7 negative outlooks for every positive outlook, worsening from 4.8 at the end of Q2.