RSS feedRating agencies
’Rate as I say, not as I do
Posted by Joseph Cotterill on Jan 13 17:53. Comment.From the European Commission in November:
2. More transparent and more frequent sovereign debt ratings.
Member States would be rated more frequently (every six months rather than 12 months) and investors and Member States would be informed of the underlying facts and assumptions on each rating. More…
BHL sur… the rating agencies
Posted by Joseph Cotterill on Dec 15 09:07. Comment.Some are phlegmatic about a downgrade of France’s AAA credit rating:
La possible perte par la France de son triple A vous inquiète-t-elle?
Ce ne serait pas une bonne nouvelle bien sûr, mais ce ne serait pas non plus un cataclysme… More…
Hacking the messenger
Posted by Joseph Cotterill on Jul 07 19:11. Comment.Not actually a hack — a URL script trick.
Afonso and his sword were not seen when Portugal took its IMF bailout earlier this year, strangely enough.
Greek credit event? Default? Who cares? Danske Bank doesn’t
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Jun 22 10:18. Comment.From a purely academic perspective, FT Alphaville does care of course.
But in a big picture/markets sort of way — we really don’t. All this talk of what will trigger Greek CDS or whether a voluntary roll-over will constitute a default or not — won’t matter much, More…
Sovereign ratings still relevant – but mostly when they go negative
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Jun 01 11:25. Comment.Just in case you were wondering.
Bond markets still react to sovereign ratings announcements, though they tend to react more when the rating agencies say something negative. That’s the conclusion of a new working paper from the European Central Bank, More…
When sovereign ratings turn on a dime
Posted by Joseph Cotterill on Mar 29 17:15. Comment.Remember this chart from Exotix, comparing periphery ratings and bond spreads to frontier markets? One of the pair looks out of place:
So what happens when rating agencies do something about it?
Win Thin of Brown Brothers Harriman dipped into history on Tuesday, More…
Gratuitous sovereign AAA
Posted by Joseph Cotterill on Feb 17 18:36. Comment.From now on we’ll have to tell you that we practically give AAA sovereign ratings away, Standard & Poor’s said on Thursday (or something like that anyway):
Kingdom of Belgium (AA+/Negative/A-1+) More…
Through a ratings loophole, allegedly
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Feb 10 14:37. Comment.Another subprime lawsuit currently slugging its way through the courts is Cassa di Risparmio della Repubblica di San Marino SpA (CRSM) vs Barclays Plc.
The case concerns some Barclays-structured and triple A-rated CDO Squareds that were sold to the Italian bank around 2004. More…
Sovereign-bank loops, S&P and Ireland edition
Posted by Joseph Cotterill on Feb 02 12:07. Comment.Usually in Europe’s debt crisis, it’s been the sovereigns that have been downgraded first — and only then have their domestic banks followed.
In this, as in so much else, Irish banking just broke the mould. More…
Outlook negativity, charted
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Jan 20 16:17. Comment.From Fitch Ratings’ just-published Global Credit Outlook:
The agency says the decline in negative outlooks is due to “both improved creditworthiness and downgrade action, with subsequent rating stabilisation.”
Why this Greek debt junking matters
Posted by Joseph Cotterill on Jan 14 18:25. Comment.Q. No matter how big your sovereign bailout fund gets — isn’t it far more important that it’s actually sustainable to refinance its loans?
A. Ask Fitch, which has just become the last of the three big ratings agencies to junk Greece’s credit (it’s now rated B+ BB+). More…
Bye, bye AAA-rated banks at S&P…
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Jan 12 13:53. Comment.It’s weird that last week’s 73-page monster report from Standard & Poor’s, on possible changes to the way it rates the world’s banks, didn’t get more attention.
It’s an interesting attempt by S&P to make up for rating agency shortcomings (to put it mildly, More…
A two-tiered sovereign ratings system
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Nov 24 10:14. Comment.Didn’t catch Standard & Poor’s bizarre midnight downgrade of Ireland?
Click here.
Of course, as we noted at 1.51am in the morning (in London), the whole thing is rather anticlimactic. Bond markets had been trading Ireland like less than an AA- country since about May this year. More…
US downgraded on QE2 … by Chinese rating agency
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Nov 09 15:32. Comment.Well, this was bound to happen.
Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. — the Chinese rating agency which hit headlines earlier this year for its AA-view on the United States — is back. With a US downgrade. More…
Will rate CoCo bonds for food
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Nov 09 11:56. Comment.Has Fitch Ratings just given the hybrid capital market one big boost?
On Monday the rating agency quietly issued an 800-word statement outlining why it “expects to be able to rate new generation bank hybrid securities” More…
Rating agency multiplicity
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Oct 06 10:06. Comment.BREAK THE BIG THREE MONOPOLY!
MORE RATINGS FOR BETTER RATINGS!
And so on, go the regulators.
But watch it. A new NBER working paper — by Bo Becker of Harvard Business School and Todd Milbourn from Washington University — asks just how increased competition affects the ratings industry? Their findings are not what you might expect. More…
Dagong gets defiant
Posted by Cardiff Garcia on Sep 27 17:55. Comment.Oh, this is getting fun.
Put aside for a minute the ongoing debate over the renminbi and the looming threats of a trade war. Another US v China conflict is hotting up again, after a two-month lull.
Last Thursday, More…
Britain’s AAA-usterity, courtesy of Moody’s
Posted by Joseph Cotterill on Sep 20 13:28. Comment.First the AAA-rated Euro bailout fund, now this. Moody’s was obviously feeling generous on Monday.
It’s kept the UK’s top rating on a stable outlook — interesting, as Moody’s clearly believes you can have austerity and keep your AAA. More…
S&P rustles up another – yawn – AAA for the EFSF
Posted by Joseph Cotterill on Sep 20 11:35. Comment.We’re detecting a slight theme here.
Standard & Poor’s completed a hat-trick of top ratings for the European Financial Stability Facility on Monday — veritably dilly-dallying behind Moody’s and Fitch’s earlier pronouncements. From S&P’s release: More…
The first ratings agency to go unsolicited? [updated]
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Aug 23 13:00. Comment.Turns out unsolicited ratings are highly unpredictable.
No sooner had we mused whether FinReg would create a host of voluntary ratings — those not paid for by the issuer of the security — and some three weeks later we get the below (unconfirmed) report. More…
Rating agency has reservations about … unrated bonds
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Aug 02 09:51. Comment.Filed under –> Completely expected –> Rating agency behaviour.
On Monday, Fitch Ratings issued a report simply titled “Europe’s unrated bond issuers.”
The gist of the nine-page note was aptly summarised in the agency’s press release. More…
What Rule 17g-5 looks like
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Jul 29 13:00. Comment.On Monday, Ford became the first company to issue ABS since the Dodd-Frank-induced impasse.
It also, according to Total Securitization, became the first to comply with Rule 17g-5.
Rule 17g-5, briefly discussed on FT Alphaville on Wednesday, More…
ABS market freed! Ford rejoices! Ratings agencies make provisos!
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Jul 28 11:25. Comment.Behold — the first ABS to be issued since the Dodd-Frank bill caused the market to paralyse, the securitisation markets to declare the end of the world, and the ratings agencies to fight for free speech. More…
Chinese rating agency criticises … Chinese rating agencies
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Jul 27 09:50. Comment.This Chinese rating agency is really grabbing some headlines.
And not just for criticising its western rivals. Or stripping the US of a triple-A rating.
On Tuesday morning, Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. More…
What’s the SEC to do about 436(g)? Call a time out.
Posted by Stacy-Marie Ishmael on Jul 22 22:04. Comment.The securitization industry has reacted to the decision by rating agencies to step back from allowing their ratings to be used in prospectuses and registration statements by declaring the end of the world. More…
Why repealing Rule 436(g) violates the first amendment and other rating agency guff
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Jul 22 13:45. Comment.Here’s something to silence the notion that ratings agencies were caught off guard by the repeal of Rule 436(g).
The idea of eliminating the loophole which prevented the firms from being treated as experts under the US Securities Act — and therefore being more liable in lawsuits — had been discussed ad nauseum in recent years. More…
SanDOWN in Lloyds ABS! Moody’s still making mistakes
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Jul 22 10:15. Comment.And it was all going so well…
Last week, Lloyds Banking Group became the first UK bank to sell bonds backed by loans to small and medium-sized enterprises — an SME CLO — since the asset-backed market basically shut in 2007. More…
A Chinese rating agency critique
Posted by Stacy-Marie Ishmael on Jul 21 19:04. Comment.The head of Dagong Global Credit, China’s largest rating agency, is not best pleased with his western rivals.
In an interview with the FT, the agency’s chairman Guan Jianzhong didn’t mince words about the likes of Moody’s, More…
Rating agencies, Dodd-Frank and the ABS market
Posted by Stacy-Marie Ishmael on Jul 21 15:12. Comment.On Monday, FT Alphaville reported on one significant consequence of the Dodd-Frank Act: rating agencies have had to ask their clients not to cite their opinions in prospectuses and registration statements. More…
Rating agencies to debt issuers: don’t cite us [UPDATED]
Posted by Stacy-Marie Ishmael on Jul 19 20:06. Comment.Consider this another step away from the rating agencies’ ability to claim “free speech”.
On Monday, in response to certain aspects of the D0dd-Frank Act, Fitch said it would not allow debt issuers to include its ratings in prospectuses or debt registration statements. More…