Top 5 on Fin24: All eyes on Moody's, Facebook and MTN

Cape Town - A roundup of Friday's must-read financial and economic news.

D-Day for SA sovereign credit rating

By midnight on Friday South Africans should know whether Moody's has downgraded SA's sovereign credit rating to junk, or kept the country at above investment grade. 

Moody's was the only major ratings agency to not downgrade South Africa to sub-investment grade in 2017. It currently has the country at one notch above junk.

While its rival ratings agencies Fitch and S&P both downgraded SA to junk last year, Moody's maintained its sovereign rating for SA at Baa3, one rung above junk status.

• READ: D-Day for SA sovereign credit rating

Markets taking Moody's rating review in their stride

It’s a rating decision that could trigger as much as $6bn (R70.9bn) of capital outflows from the economy. Investors aren’t batting an eyelid.

South Africa will probably escape a junk assessment from Moody’s Investors Service on Friday, according to 15 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

A downgrade of the country’s local-currency debt would see the nation’s securities exit CitiGroup’s World Government Bond Index, leading to forced selling of government notes by funds that track the gauge.

Traders don’t see much prospect of that, options pricing shows. While the rand’s one-week implied volatility versus the dollar has edged up in recent days, it’s still well below the long-term average.

• READ: Markets taking Moody's rating review in their stride
  

Rand holds firm as Moody's rating decision looms

The rand continued to firm in the early hours of Friday afternoon, as analysts remained cautiously optimistic that Moody's would not downgrade SA's sovereign debt to junk. 

At 15:20 on Friday the local currency was trading at 11.76/$, up 0.75% on the day. It had opened at 11.85 to the greenback. 

"Market consensus is that Moody’s will refrain from downgrading South Africa and might even move to lift the negative watch, an expectation the rand is thoroughly enjoying," said Bianca Botes, corporate treasury manager at Peregrine Treasury Solutions in a statement earlier in the day. 

• READ: Rand holds firm as Moody's rating decision looms

Worried about being on Facebook? Some options explained

A snowballing Facebook scandal over the hijacking of personal data from millions of its users has many wondering whether it's time to restrict access to their Facebook information or even leave the social network altogether, with the #deletefacebook movement gaining traction.

Here are some options open to the worried Facebook user:

• Put it to sleep
• Kill the account
• Be more alert
• Go after Facebook

• READ: Worried about being on Facebook? Some options explained

MTN prepaid voice tariffs jump as new price structure kicks in

MTN prepaid customers can expect to fork out up to an extra 41 cents per minute as the mobile network’s new prepaid price structure kicks in on Friday. 

MTN’s Pay Per Second customers can now expect to pay R0.99 per minute, both on the MTN network and to other networks, up from R0.79 per minute. MTN Talk Free customers who currently pay R0.79 per minute will now pay R1.20 per minute.

MTN corporate affairs executive Jacqui O'Sullivan told Fin24 that the changes announced in the prepaid voice category are part of its overall prepaid portfolio review and are not linked to the value-added tax (VAT) change.

• READ: MTN prepaid voice tariffs jump as new price structure kicks in

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