Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) — Credit-rating firms, whose lapses played a central role in the 2008 financial crisis, will face new restrictions on conflicts of interest under rules adopted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The rules, approved on a 3-2 vote today, require firms including Moody's Investors Service and McGraw Hill Financial Inc.'s Standard & Poor's to ensure they follow internal methods when grading debt and revising ratings. They will also have to boost disclosure on their accuracy, including a common way of presenting default and downgrade rates for bonds backed by loans for homes and commercial buildings.
Seeking to prevent graders from pandering to the bond issuers, who pay for the ratings, the rules include a strict prohibition on allowing sales motives to influence them. Firms also would have to re-examine the ratings of analysts who leave to join companies whose products they rated.
Complete your profile to continue reading and get FREE access to BenefitsPRO, part of your ALM digital membership.
Your access to unlimited BenefitsPRO content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
