Category: Rating agencies

Nothing to see here: Part 1, Failure to report …

2 June, 2008 (09:12) | Capital markets, Governance, Rating agencies, Securitization, US News | No comments

If you can’t report the news on time, the news you eventually report is almost always bad.  I formulated this theory in 1977, and it’s served me well ever since.

It was a time of tight jeans and floppy hair
 
As the subprime mess reaches saturation of troubled borrowers and dissipates into tardy omnibus rescue legislation [...]

Negotiating your rating: Part 3, the circumstantial evidence

25 April, 2008 (09:52) | Finance markets, Rating agencies, Subprime, Theory, US News | No comments

[Continued from the previous Part 1 and Part 2.]
 

For the previous two days, we’ve been delving into whether, as implied by a Wall Street Journal article on the rating agencies, Moody’s got so cozy with the issuers it was rating, and who were paying its fees, that it succumbed to grade inflation.
 
 [For background on the [...]

Negotiating your rating: Part 2, the rough and tumble

24 April, 2008 (09:10) | Finance markets, Rating agencies, Subprime, Theory, US News | 1 comment

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]

 
Yesterday we tackled a tough subject — how much opportunity should an issuer have to work with a rating agency to achieve a target result?
 
[For background on the rating agencies, see my five-part post from last August, A Symbiote's Life is Not a Happy One, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part [...]

Negotiating your rating: Part 1, the ivory tower

23 April, 2008 (09:08) | Finance markets, Rating agencies, Subprime, Theory, US News | No comments

How much opportunity should an issuer have to work with a rating agency to achieve a target result?
 
[For background on the rating agencies, see my five-part post from last August, A Symbiote's Life is Not a Happy One, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.]
 

 
Mel: You mean to tell me that you [...]