The SEC is hosting an all-day roundtable discussion on the credit rating agencies and their role in the financial crisis.
The agenda and list of speakers for today’s session are available here.
And you can tune in to watch it here. It started only moments ago (15:00 BST).
The remarkable thing about this all though, is that it’s happening at all. The SEC has already, forget not, investigated the rating agencies and made a host of milquetoast recommendations on their reform. “We’re inviting a lot of people who have had some very interesting ideas about what would be a better model,” Mary Schapiro, the SEC’s new chairman said to Congress in March.
In other words, the SEC is opening its ears to wholesale reform. We’re particularly interested in hearing what Sean Egan of Egan-Jones has to say, and how well the SEC will receive his model – an investor pays method of rating.
Watch this space.
Related link:
Rating cows – FT Alphaville