In a Thursday teleconference, Standard & Poor’s said that it does not see any major impacts on Canadian banks from last week’s attack on the World Trade Center.

S&P managing director Tanya Azarchs said that she does not anticipate any unusual effects on the Canadian banks, apart from the impact of the general economic slowdown. None of the Canadian banks had any major operations in the area, she notes, apart from CIBC World Markets, so there was minimal physical damage to their operations.

The bank are however, subject to the apparent recession in the United States, Azarchs noted, since they all have substantial operations in the U.S. They will also be hit by any knock-on effect from the U.S. recession to the Canadian economy.

Don Chu, an S&P analyst in Toronto, noted that the Canadian banks had very little disruption in their clearing operations. At most, it was a one or two day affair, he says, noting that things have been substantially corrected.

The big banks have strong balance sheets, diversified asset bases and minimal lending exposure to industries, such as airlines, that are being decimated by the effects of the attack.

While S&P generally painted a pretty gloomy picture for the U.S. economy, partly in the wake of the attack, and partly due to deteriorating fundamentals — Azarchs noted that there are bright spots in defense contractors, security-related businesses and infrastructure finance. She doesn’t anticipate any major financial industry consolidation coming out of the disaster, rather she suggested this event proved the value of diversity.