Suchergebnisse

This book aims to present a picture of one of the world's leading credit rating agencies. Credited as being the first credit rating agency, Moody's stands as the epitome of the rating sector and all that it effects. However, outside of internal and non-public histories compiled within the rating agency itself, the story of Moody's has never been told, until now. However, this is not a historical book. Rather, this book paints a picture of Moody's on a wider canvas that introduces the concept of rating to you, taking into account the origins of the sector, the competitive battles that formed the modern-day oligopoly, and the characters that have each taken their turn on sculpting the industry that, today, is critical to the modern economy. The book is a story of personable people who provided the market with what it needed, but it is more than that. It is a story of conflict, impact, strategy, and most of all the relationship between big business and modern society. Standing as the gatekeeper to the capital markets that form the core of modern society, Moody's represents the very best of what the marketplace can produce, but also the very worst. This story takes in economic crises in the antebellum US, the Panics of the early 1900s, the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression and, of course, the Global Financial Crisis. It does this because, at the heart of each one was a member of the rating industry or the reporting industry that preceded it. Associated with almost any financial scandal you may care to remember the credit rating agencies, in their often-uncomfortable role as gatekeepers, have their fingerprints on most financial scandals and calamities. This book tells the story of the industry's founding member.

In 2020, the G20 proposed a solution for the debt-related issues affecting the world's poorest countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, their initiatives have failed to meet their objectives. The author argues that the reason for this failure is the inability to bring sovereign countries to the table to re-negotiate their debt agreements with private creditors as they fear credit rating agencies and the prospect of a downgrade. The author refers to this as the 'credit rating impasse'.

This book proposes a novel solution. The author asserts that there is a need in the literature to unpick the dynamic that exists and creates that impasse, namely the pressures that exist between sovereign states, private creditors, credit rating agencies, and the geo-political backdrop that is massively influential in the dynamic, that is, the adversarial relationship between China and the US.

This book addresses the recent history of debt treatment for poorer countries and related successes and failures: COVID-19-related issues and the development of the Debt Service Suspension Initiative and the Common Framework for Debt Treatment. This book examines the reasons for their failure by analysing the positions of the sovereign states, the division between private and official creditors and between multilateral institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, credit rating agencies, and the competing political entities of China and the US. It presents a wider picture of the systemic underpinnings to such debt-related issues and, when examined through a geo-political perspective, the subsequent chances of future debt treatment-related successes.

Licence line: The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book details the difference between the two rating industries, but this difference is converging all the time. The concept of investing in a more responsible and sustainable manner is drawing in some of the world's leading investors and, with it, regulations and policies are developing at the highest levels. However, the market is not getting what it needs to fully submit to the concept of responsible investing. It has called for more to be done from those tasked with injecting information into their processes, and two industries in particular have been identified as being natural partners. It has been suggested that they are on a collision course to serve the mainstream investor, and in this book, that collision course is contextualised, explained, presented, and finally its outcome predicted.

This Palgrave Pivot aims to examine the bourgeoning relationship between the Principles for Responsible Investment and the Credit Rating Industry. Since May of 2016, when the partnership was initially publicised, the PRI have endeavoured to incorporate Credit Rating Agencies into its initiative via its 'ESG in Credit Ratings Initiative', and have been working diligently to find, and create common ground between Credit Rating Agencies and Institutional Investors seeking to be more forward-looking in their investment approaches. However, in recent years the 'Big Two' Credit Rating Agencies - Standard & Poor's and Moody's - have finally received record fines for their conduct in the run-up to the Financial Crisis. There is a need, then, to examine the incorporation of the Credit Rating Agencies into such a progressive initiative. To achieve this objective, this book examines the field of 'responsible investing', the credit rating industry, and the power dynamic that exists between the rating industry, investors, and the PRI (via its 'Initiative').--

Purpose
The European Commission (EC) is currently examining methods to increase the effectiveness of corporate governance disclosures. This paper aims to examine whether the credit rating agencies (CRAs), both on account of their influence within the marketplace and also their methodological approach to rating Governance, may have a greater role to play in the EC achieving those particular objectives.


Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based upon a normative methodology, upon which the issue is contextualised and a proposal is put forward regarding a methodological alteration that can be instituted by the CRAs.


Findings
The paper finds that the CRAs may have a much greater role to play in meeting the objectives of the EC. Whilst the EC is focusing upon regulatory monitoring, the paper finds that there is a potential for a more efficient model within which the CRAs adapt their methodologies to include corporate governance disclosure into their rating processes.


Originality/value
In presenting the idea that the comply or explain principles put forward by the EC are proving to be somewhat ineffective, the paper contributes to the field by suggesting there are private endeavours which may add a sense of impact to disclosure proceedings, rather than the purely public regime being envisioned.