Tuesday, July 3rd 2012 - 03:31 UTC

EU markets’ watchdog investigating three major credit rating agencies

The European markets watchdog is investigating whether the big three credit ratings agencies' methods of evaluating banks are rigorous and transparent enough, its chairman Steven Maijoor told the Financial Times on Monday.

Steven Maijoor “are they rigorous and transparent enough?”

The European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma) is inspecting Standard & Poor's (S&P), Fitch and Moody's Investors Service, and it expects to finish by the end of the year, the newspaper said.

Maijoor said mass downgrades, such as Moody's change of stance on 15 global banks last month, “raised concerns about whether there are sufficient analytical resources” at the ratings agencies.

He told the newspaper that Esma was not attempting to influence the ratings but was only asking that the agencies' choices made economic sense and were logical.

S&P told the FT that it was looking forward to explaining the steps it had taken to “maximise the transparency, quality and consistency” of its bank ratings. The other two agencies declined to comment to the newspaper.

The ratings firms must register and remain in good standing with the regulator to operate in Europe although the agency has never taken an enforcement action since its founding two years ago.
 

Published in: Economy, International.
Tags: Steven Maijoor.

7 comments Feed

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1 Think (#) Jul 03rd, 2012 - 04:05 am Report abuse
Odd……………

The Kirchner administration has been advocating on every international forum during the last 10 years, for more control over these self proclaimed economical Yankee gurus…………

And now the EU is doing it…….

Evidently, Europe is becoming a Dictatorship that wishes to silence its well meaning critics…

Chuckle chuckle©
2 Fido Dido (#) Jul 03rd, 2012 - 05:17 am Report abuse
They've should done this a long time ago. Every nation can create it's own credit rating and simply down grade US treasury's note who are in reality..worth zero. The Germans already did that, China already did that. USA is double AA and might be loose it in December 2012 if they don't “act” well in the next debate of the national debt (that keeps rising, no matter what it does, because of interests costs and continue spending on war that never ends). The 3 big rating's angecies who ”could not forsee the crisis for some reasons (duh, they are in hands of the money changers, aka the same banksters who defrauded and continue to defraud nations and lecture you constantly about their free trade and deregulation nonsense ) moody's, Fitch and Standard and Poor ratins : here an offer you can't refuse. Austerity or I'll cut your rating and interest rates rises or pay up more to have “tripple A” next to your name on the list.

“Europe is becoming a Dictatorship that wishes to silence its well meaning critics…”

All critics who said that the EU is a dictatorship during the 90's are right, the rest is wrong and are frozen while brussels is getting more powerful (sovereignity is gone) and most stooges who used to work for Golman Sachs, Lehman brothers and JP Morgan Chase are now “technocrats” ..ups i'm sorry..are (unelected) prime minister or finance leaders. I'm sure you get the picture. Europe (ECB is Deutsche Bank and the Deutsche Bundesbank, that's why the HQ is in Frankfurt an main) , just like the US, are in the hands of the banksters, while kool-aid drinkers still believe neoliberalism is the way to go, what happened in other countries is impossible to happen here because they would never do that to their own people (yep, they exist even in this digital age where we have so much access to good old info that looks new today) and aren't ready for what happened during menem (el modelo).
The Take (La Toma) English subtitles (1/9)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEzXln5
3 Guzz (#) Jul 03rd, 2012 - 05:29 am Report abuse
The only ones that defends these ratings are the ones with triple A... Curiously enough, they defend it less and less for every downrate :)
4 GeoffWard2 (#) Jul 03rd, 2012 - 10:27 am Report abuse
Perhaps a Barclays-type investigation into possible cartel-like rigging of the credit ratings, for both the rating of national governments (countries) and companies?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
5 Fido Dido (#) Jul 03rd, 2012 - 06:43 pm Report abuse
“Perhaps a Barclays-type investigation into possible cartel-like rigging of the credit ratings”

What perhaps or possible, it's a fact that Barclays is/was involved, but hey, are the ones who were envolved and knew about it go to jail? Answer is no.
6 St.John (#) Jul 04th, 2012 - 03:17 am Report abuse
Those three rating agencies rated bundled US subprime loans as AAA although they were toxic investments.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
7 GeoffWard2 (#) Jul 04th, 2012 - 07:18 am Report abuse
A multi-billion $ set of law suits coming to Barclays (and other international banks? - collusion is necessary to fix the rate) from the USA for blighting the US economy through fixing LIBOR?

I imagine requests for extradition of a US national will be quite straightforward.
The trials will be swift, and the prison sentences can be expected to be very long indeed.
Bob Diamond might be seeking a friendly South American embassy to request shelter.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

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