Mining rescue lifts Chile's credit rating up into the light

While the world watched in awe as 33 men emerged, blinking, into the daylight above Chile's collapsed San Jose mine, the world's hedge funds and assorted financial opportunists will have been racking their brains for an investment opportunity. Buy drill manufacturers? Pump funds into the Chilean public relations industry? Quick as a flash, the French ratings agency Coface has gone bullish on Chile, declaring that the reputational impact of the dramatic mining rescue will do the Andean nation's economy the world of good. "It provides to international investors an image of a country where you can do safe business," Coface's UK managing director, Xavier Denecker, tells me. "It gives a good impression in terms of technology, solidarity and efficiency." Coface rates countries according to the probability of private-sector companies going bust. Chile already holds its highest rating in South America: A2. The UK, in comparison, is inferior – we can only muster an A3. It seems that, in financial terms, a good mining rescue might do the British economy the world of good. Now, if only Mrs Thatcher hadn't shut down all our mines…