Standard & Poor, one of the nation's major credit agencies, announced today that an agreement has been reached with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to overhaul business practices in the aftermath of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Although details of the agreement have yet to be disclosed, it will most likely tweak Standard & Poor's fee structure and reform the actual ratings process. Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings, the other two major agencies, are also in negotiations with Cuomo but neither agency has commented on their negotiations.
Cuomo has been investigating all three agencies on how they charge the bond issuers who ask them for ratings. Criticism at the agencies have been raised for their failure to accurately assess and warn investors about the risks mortgage investments posed to financial markets. Only over the past year did these rating agencies begin downgrading thousands of mortgage-linked securities as U.S. mortgage delinquencies soared and the value of those investments plummeted.
Questions have also been raised on how vulnerable the agencies are to conflicts of interest since they are paid by these bond issuers whose bonds they rate. So far, executives at Standard & Poor, Moody's and Fitch said they are taking measures to strengthen protections against conflicts and are cooperating with the SEC and others to improve the quality of their analysis and have changed numerous business practices in response to the mortgage mess. All three have defended their track record of analyzing the mortgage market in recent years and said they have adequate protections against conflicts of interest.
Meanwhile, the SEC is considering new rules to limit conflicts of interest in the credit-rating industry and to require the rating firms to disclose detailed information on the mortgage assets related to the securities they rate.
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