A credit rating agency (CRA) is a company that assigns credit ratings for issuers of certain types of debt obligations as well as the debt instruments themselves. Corporate finance is an area of Finance dealing with the financial decisions Corporations make and the tools and analysis used to make these decisions Working capital, also known as net working capital, is a financial metric which represents operating liquidity available to a business Cash conversion cycle or CCC is the time duration in which a firm is able to convert its resources into cash Return on invested capital (ROIC is a financial measure that quantifies how well a company generates cash flow relative to the capital it has invested in its business In Corporate finance, Economic Value Added or EVA® is an estimate of true economic profit after making corrective adjustments to GAAP accounting including Just-in-time ( JIT) is an inventory strategy implemented to improve the Return on investment of a Business by reducing in-process Inventory and Economic order quantity is that level of inventory that minimizes the total of inventory holding cost and ordering cost Discounts and allowances are reductions to a basic Price of goods or services Factoring is a word often misused synonymously with accounts receivable financing. Capital budgeting (or investment appraisal is the planning process used to determine whether a firm's long term Investments such as new machinery replacement machinery new Corporate finance is an area of Finance dealing with the financial decisions Corporations make and the tools and analysis used to make these decisions Corporate finance is an area of Finance dealing with the financial decisions Corporations make and the tools and analysis used to make these decisions Corporate finance is an area of Finance dealing with the financial decisions Corporations make and the tools and analysis used to make these decisions Managerial finance is the branch of finance that concerns itself with the managerial significance of finance techniques Financial accountancy (or financial accounting) is the field of Accountancy concerned with the preparation of Financial statements for decision makers Management accounting is concerned with the provisions and use of Accounting information to managers within organizations to provide them with the basis to make informed business In Financial accounting, a balance sheet or statement of financial position is a summary of a person's or organization's balances A business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals the reasons why they are believed attainable and the plan for reaching those goals A corporate action is an event initiated by a Public company that affects the securities ( Equity or Debt) issued by the company The field of finance refers to the concepts of Time, Money and Risk and how they are interrelated In Economics, a financial market is a mechanism that allows people to easily buy and sell ( Trade) financial Securities (such as stocks and bonds There are two basic financial market participant categories Investor vs Corporate finance is an area of Finance dealing with the financial decisions Corporations make and the tools and analysis used to make these decisions Personal finance is the application of the principles of Finance to the monetary decisions of an individual or family unit Public finance is a field of economics concerned with paying for collective or governmental activities and with the administration and design of those activities A banker or bank is a Financial institution whose primary activity is to act as a payment agent for customers and to borrow and lend money Financial regulations are a form of Regulation or supervision which subjects Financial institutions to certain requirements restrictions and guidelines aiming to A credit rating assesses the Credit worthiness of an individual Corporation, or even a country In some cases, the servicers of the underlying debt are also given ratings. In most cases, the issuers of securities are companies, special purpose entities, state and local governments, non-profit organizations, or national governments issuing debt-like securities (i. A special purpose entity ( SPE) (sometimes especially in Europe " special purpose vehicle " or simply SPV) is a body corporate (usually a e. , bonds) that can be traded on a secondary market. The secondary market is the financial market for trading of securities that have already been issued in an initial private or public offering A credit rating for an issuer takes into consideration the issuer's credit worthiness (i. Credit risk is the risk of loss due to a debtor's non-payment of a Loan or other line of credit (either the principal or Interest (coupon or both Faced e. , its ability to pay back a loan), and affects the interest rate applied to the particular security being issued. A loan is a type of Debt. This article focuses exclusively on monetary loans although in practice any material object might be lent Interest is a fee paid on borrowed capital Assets lent include Money, Shares, Consumer goods through Hire purchase, major assets (In contrast to CRAs, a company that issues credit scores for individual credit-worthiness is generally called a credit bureau or consumer credit reporting agency. A credit score is a numerical expression based on a statistical analysis of a person's credit files to represent the Creditworthiness of that person A credit bureau (US or credit reference agency (UK is a company that collects information from various sources and provides consumer Credit information on individual A credit bureau (US or credit reference agency (UK is a company that collects information from various sources and provides consumer Credit information on individual )
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Credit rating agencies for corporations and government entities
For more information, see Bond credit rating. In Investment, the bond credit rating assesses the Credit worthiness of a Corporation 's debt issues
Agencies (that assign credit ratings for corporations include:
- A. M. Best (U. A M Best Company Inc, headquartered in Oldwick New Jersey, is Rating agency designated as an Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization S. )
- Baycorp Advantage (Australia)
- Dominion Bond Rating Service (Canada)
- Fitch Ratings (U. Veda Advantage is the largest Credit bureau in Australia and New Zealand. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Australia topics. DBRS is a credit rating agency headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. Country to "Dominion of Canada" or "Canadian Federation" or anything else please read the Talk Page Fitch Ratings Ltd is an international Credit rating agency dual-headquartered in New York City and London. S. )
- Moody's (U. Moody's Corporation ( is the holding company for Moody's Investors Service which performs financial research and analysis on commercial and government entities S. )
- Standard & Poor's (U. Standard & Poor's ( S&P) is a division of McGraw-Hill that publishes financial research and analysison Stocks and bonds. S. )
- Pacific Credit Rating (Peru)
- Egan-Jones Ratings Company (U.S.)
- Capital Intelligence Ltd (Cyprus)
Uses of ratings
Credit ratings are used by investors, issuers, investment banks, broker-dealers, and by governments. Pacific Credit Rating-PCR is a Latin American Credit rating agency. Peru (Perú Piruw Piruw officially the Republic of Peru ( reˈpuβlika del peˈɾu is a country in western South America. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Cyprus (Κύπρος transliterated: Kýpros,; Kıbrıs officially the Republic of Cyprus (Κυπριακή Δημοκρατία Kypriakī́ Dīmokratía For investors, credit rating agencies increase the range of investment alternatives and provide independent, easy-to-use measurements of relative credit risk; this generally increases the efficiency of the market, lowering costs for both borrowers and lenders. This in turn increases the total supply of risk capital in the economy, leading to stronger growth. It also opens the capital markets to categories of borrower who might otherwise be shut out altogether: small governments, startup companies, hospitals and universities.
Ratings use by bond issuers
Issuers rely on credit ratings as an independent verification of their own credit-worthiness and the resultant value of the instruments the issue. In most cases, a significant bond issuance must have at least one rating from a respected CRA for the issuance to be successful (without such a rating, the issuance may be undersubscribed or the price offered by investors too low for the issuer's purposes). Recent studies by the Bond Market Association note that many institutional investors now prefer that a debt issuance have at least three ratings. The Bond Market Association (former name Public Securities Association was the international trade association for the bond market industry Issuers also use credit ratings in certain structured finance transactions. For example, a company with a very high credit rating wishing to undertake a particularly risky research project could create a legally separate entity with certain assets that would own and conduct the research work. This "special purpose entity" would then assume all of the research risk and issue its own debt securities to finance the research. A special purpose entity ( SPE) (sometimes especially in Europe " special purpose vehicle " or simply SPV) is a body corporate (usually a The SPE's credit rating likely would be very low and the issuer would have to pay a high rate of return on the bonds issued. However, this risk would not lower the parent company's overall credit rating because the SPE would be a legally separate entity. Conversely, a company with a low credit rating might be able to borrow on better terms if it were to form an SPE and transfer significant assets to that subsidiary and issue secured debt securities. A secured loan is a Loan in which the borrower pledges some asset (e That way, if the venture were to fail, the lenders would have recourse to the assets owned by the SPE. This would lower the interest rate the SPE would need to pay as part of the debt offering.
The same issuer also may have different credit ratings for different bonds. This difference results from the bond's structure, how it is secured, and the degree to which the bond is subordinated to other debt. A secured loan is a Loan in which the borrower pledges some asset (e In Finance, subordinated debt (also known as subordinated loan, subordinated bond, subordinated debenture or junior debt) is debt Many larger CRAs offer "credit rating advisory services" that essentially advise an issuer on how to structure its bond offerings and SPEs so as to achieve a given credit rating for a certain debt tranche. In Structured finance, a tranche (misspelled as traunch or traunche) is one of a number of related securities offered as part of the same transaction This creates a potential conflict of interest, of course, as the CRA may feel obligated to provide the issuer with that given rating if the issuer followed its advice on structuring the offering. Some CRAs avoid this conflict by refusing to rate debt offerings for which its advisory services were sought.
Ratings use by investment banks and broker-dealers
Investment banks and broker-dealers also use credit ratings in calculating their own risk portfolios (i. In finance a portfolio is an appropriate mix of or collection of investments held by an institution or a private individual e. , the collective risk of all of their investments). Larger banks and broker-dealers conduct their own risk calculations, but rely on CRA ratings as a "check" (and double-check or triple-check) against their own analyses.
Ratings use by government regulators
Regulators use credit ratings as well, or permit these ratings to be used for regulatory purposes. For example, under the Basel II agreement of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, banking regulators can allow banks to use credit ratings from certain approved CRAs (called "ECAIs" or "External Credit Assessment Institutions") when calculating their net capital reserve requirements. Basel II (also known as Βασιλεία ΙΙ in Greek) is the second of the Basel Accords, which are recommendations on banking laws and regulations The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is an institution created by the Central bank Governors of the Group of Ten nations. In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) permits investment banks and broker-dealers to use credit ratings from "Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations" (or "NRSROs") for similar purposes. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (commonly known as the SEC) is an independent agency of the United States government which holds primary responsibility A Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization (or "NRSRO" is a Credit rating agency which issues credit ratings that the U A Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization (or "NRSRO" is a Credit rating agency which issues credit ratings that the U The idea is that banks and other financial institutions should not need to keep in reserve the same amount of capital to protect the institution against (for example) a run on the bank, if the financial institution is heavily invested in highly liquid and very "safe" securities (such as U. S. government bonds or short-term commercial paper from very stable companies).
CRA ratings are also used for other regulatory purposes as well. The U. S. SEC, for example, permits certain bond issuers to use a shortened prospectus form when issuing bonds if the issuer is older, has issued bonds before, and has a credit rating above a certain level. SEC regulations also require that money market funds (mutual funds that mimic the safety and liquidity of a bank savings deposit, but without FDIC insurance) comprise only securities with a very high rating from an NRSRO. In Finance, the money market is the global Financial market for short-term borrowing and lending The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ( FDIC) is a United States government corporation created by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 Likewise, insurance regulators use credit ratings to ascertain the strength of the reserves held by insurance companies.
It is important to note that under both Basel II and SEC regulations, not just any CRA's ratings can be used for regulatory purposes. (If this were the case, it would present an obvious moral hazard, since an issuer, insurance company, or investment bank would have a strong incentive to seek out a CRA with the most lax standards, with potentially dire consequences for overall financial stability. ) Rather, there is a vetting process, of varying sorts. The Basel II guidelines (paragraph 91, et al), for example, describe certain criteria that bank regulators should look to when permitting the ratings from a particular CRA to be used. These include "objectivity," "independence," "transparency," and others. Banking regulators from a number of jurisdictions have since issued their own discussion papers on this subject, to further define how these terms will be used in practice. (See The Committee of European Banking Supervisors Discussion Paper, or the State Bank of Pakistan ECAI Criteria. )
In the United States, since 1975, NRSRO recognition has been granted through a "No Action Letter" sent by the SEC staff. Following this approach, if a CRA (or investment bank or broker-dealer) were interested in using the ratings from a particular CRA for regulatory purposes, the SEC staff would research the market to determine whether ratings from that particular CRA are widely used and considered "reliable and credible. " If the SEC staff determines that this is the case, it sends a letter to the CRA indicating that if a regulated entity were to rely on the CRA's ratings, the SEC staff will not recommend enforcement action against that entity. These "No Action" letters are made public and can be relied upon by other regulated entities, not just the entity making the original request. The SEC has since sought to further define the criteria it uses when making this assessment, and in March 2005 published a proposed regulation to this effect.
On September 29, 2006, U. S. President George W. Bush signed into law the "Rating Reform Act of 2006". This law requires the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission to clarify how NRSRO recognition is granted, eliminates the "No Action Letter" approach and makes NRSRO recognition a Commission (rather than SEC staff) decision, and requires NRSROs to register with, and be regulated by, the SEC. On Feb. 2, 2007, the SEC proposed a rule on "Oversight of Credit Rating Agencies Registered as Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations" that would implement the CRA Reform Act.
Recognizing CRAs' role in capital formation, some governments have attempted to jumpstart their domestic rating-agency businesses with various kinds of regulatory relief or encouragement. This may, however, be counterproductive, if it dulls the market mechanism by which agencies compete, subsidizing less-capable agencies and penalizing agencies that devote resources to higher-quality opinions.
Ratings use in structured finance
Credit rating agencies may also play a key role in structured financial transactions. Structured finance is a broad term used to describe a sector of Finance that was created to help transfer Risk using complex legal and corporate entities Unlike a "typical" loan or bond issuance, where a borrower offers to pay a certain return on a loan, structured financial transactions may be viewed as either a series of loans with different characteristics, or else a number of small loans of a similar type packaged together into a series of "buckets" (with the "buckets" or different loans called "tranches"). In Structured finance, a tranche (misspelled as traunch or traunche) is one of a number of related securities offered as part of the same transaction Credit ratings often determine the interest rate or price ascribed to a particular tranche, based on the quality of loans or quality of assets contained within that grouping.
Companies involved in structured financing arrangements often consult with credit rating agencies to help them determine how to structure the individual tranches so that each receives a desired credit rating. For example, a firm may wish to borrow a large sum of money by issuing debt securities. In Finance, a bond is a Debt security, in which the authorized issuer owes the holders a debt and is obliged to repay the principal and Interest However, the amount is so large that the return investors may demand on a single issuance would be prohibitive. Instead, it decides to issue three separate bonds, with three separate credit ratings -- A (medium low risk), BBB (medium risk), and BB (speculative) (using Standard & Poor's rating system). The firm expects that the effective interest rate it pays on the A-rated bonds will be much less than the rate it must pay on the BB-rated bonds, but that, overall, the amount it must pay for the total capital it raises will be less than it would pay if the entire amount were raised from a single bond offering. As this transaction is devised, the firm may consult with a credit rating agency to see how it must structure each tranche -- in other words, what types of assets must be used to secure the debt in each tranche -- in order for that tranche to receive the desired rating when it is issued. A secured loan is a Loan in which the borrower pledges some asset (e
Currently, there is some debate, particularly in France, about whether such consulting arrangements by credit rating agencies constitute a conflict of interest. Under this view, if a CRA has offered its consulting services in structuring such a financial arrangement (for which it charges a fee), that CRA may feel obligated to give each debt tranche the credit rating it suggested would result from their advice. Such criticism has intensified in the wake of large losses in the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) market that occurred despite being assigned top ratings by the CRAs. For other subjects with the same abbreviation see CDO. Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs are an unregulated type of Asset-backed security For instance, losses on $340. 7 million worth of collateralized debt obligations (CDO) issued by Credit Suisse Group added up to about $125 million, despite being rated AAA or Aaa by Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Group. [1]
The rating agencies respond that their advice constitutes only a "point in time" analysis, that they make clear that they never promise or guarantee a certain rating to a tranche, and that they also make clear that any change in circumstance regarding the risk factors of a particular tranche will invalidate their analysis and result in a different credit rating. In addition, some CRAs do not rate bond issuances upon which they have offered such advice.
Complicating matters, particularly where structured finance transactions are concerned, the rating agencies state that their ratings are opinions regarding the likelihood that a given debt security will fail to be serviced over a given period of time, and not an opinion on the volatility of that security and certainly not the wisdom of investing in that security. In the past, most highly rated (AAA or Aaa) debt securities were characterized low volatility and high liquidity -- in other words, the price of a highly rated bond did not fluctuate greatly day-to-day, and sellers of such securities could easily find buyers. However, where structured transactions that involve the bundling of hundreds or thousands of similar (and similarly rated) securities tend to concentrate similar risk in such a way that even a slight change on a chance of default can have an enormous effect on the price of the bundled security. This means that even though a rating agency could be correct in its opinion that the chance of default of a structured product is very low, even a slight change in the market's perception of the risk of that product can have a disproportionate effect on the product's market price, with the result that an ostensibly AAA or Aaa-rated security can collapse in price even without there being any default (or significant chance of default). This possibility raises significant regulatory issues because the use of ratings in securities and banking regulation (as noted above) assumes that high ratings correspond with low volatility and high liquidity.
Criticism
Credit rating agencies have been subject to the following criticisms:
- Credit rating agencies do not downgrade companies promptly enough. For example, Enron's rating remained at investment grade four days before the company went bankrupt, despite the fact that credit rating agencies had been aware of the company's problems for months. [2][3] Some finance scholars have documented in empirical studies that yield spreads of corporate bonds start to expand as credit quality deteriorates but before a rating downgrade, implying that the market often leads a downgrade and questioning the informational value of credit ratings. This has led to suggestions that, rather than rely on CRA ratings in financial regulation, financial regulators should instead require banks, broker-dealers and insurance firms (among others) to use credit spreads when calculating the risk in their portfolio. In Finance, a credit spread is the Yield spread, or difference in yield between different Securities, due to different credit quality In finance a portfolio is an appropriate mix of or collection of investments held by an institution or a private individual
- Large corporate rating agencies have been criticized for having too familiar a relationship with company management, possibly opening themselves to undue influence or the vulnerability of being misled. These agencies meet frequently in person with the management of many companies, and advise on actions the company should take to maintain a certain rating. Furthermore, because information about ratings changes from the larger CRAs can spread so quickly (by word of mouth, email, etc. ), the larger CRAs charge debt issuers, rather than investors, for their ratings. This has led to accusations that these CRAs are plagued by conflicts of interest that might inhibit them from providing accurate and honest ratings. At the same time, more generally, the largest agencies (Moody's and Standard & Poor's) are often seen as agents of globalization and/or "Anglo-American" market forces, that drive companies to consider how a proposed activity might effect their credit rating, possibly at the expense of employees, the environment, or long-term research and development. Globalization (or globalisation) in its literal sense is the process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones These accusations are not entirely consistent: on one hand, the larger CRAs are accused of being too cosy with the companies they rate, and on the other hand they are accused of being too focused on a company's "bottom line" and unwilling to listen to a company's explanations for its actions. Net income is equal to the Income that a firm has after subtracting costs and Expenses from the total Revenue.
- The lowering of a credit score by a CRA can create a vicious cycle, as not only interest rates for that company would go up, but other contracts with financial institutions may be affected adversely, causing an increase in expenses and ensuing decrease in credit worthiness. A virtuous circle or a vicious circle is a complex of events that reinforces itself through a Feedback loop toward greater instability In some cases, large loans to companies contain a clause that makes the loan due in full if the companies' credit rating is lowered beyond a certain point (usually a "speculative" or "junk bond" rating). In Finance, a high yield bond ( non-investment grade bond, speculative grade bond or junk bond) is a bond that is rated below The purpose of these "ratings triggers" is to ensure that the bank is able to lay claim to a weak company's assets before the company declares bankruptcy and a receiver is appointed to divide up the claims against the company. Bankruptcy is a legally declared inability or impairment of ability of an individual or organization to pay their Creditors Creditors may file a bankruptcy petition against The effect of such ratings triggers, however, can be devastating: under a worst-case scenario, once the company's debt is downgraded by a CRA, the company's loans become due in full; since the troubled company likely is incapable of paying all of these loans in full at once, it is forced into bankruptcy (a so-called "death spiral"). Death spiral financing is a process where Convertible financing used to fund primarily small cap companies can be used against it in the marketplace to cause the company’s These rating triggers were instrumental in the collapse of Enron. Enron Creditors Recovery Corporation (formerly Enron Corporation, former NYSE ticker symbol ENE was an American Energy company based in Since that time, major agencies have put extra effort into detecting these triggers and discouraging their use, and the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires that public companies in the United States disclose their existence.
- Agencies are sometimes accused of being oligopolists [4], because barriers to market entry are high and rating agency business is itself reputation-based (and the finance industry pays little attention to a rating that is not widely recognized). An oligopoly is a Market form in which a Market or Industry is dominated by a small number of sellers (oligopolists Of the large agencies, only Moody's is a separate, publicly held corporation that discloses its financial results without dilution by non-ratings businesses. The high profit on Moody's revenues (>50% gross margin), which are consistent with the high barriers to entry, do nothing to allay market fears of monopoly pricing.
- Credit Rating Agencies have made errors of judgement in rating structured products, particularly in assigning AAA ratings to structured debt, which in a large number of cases has subsequently been downgraded or defaulted. This has led to problems for several banks whose capital requirements depend on the rating of the structured assets they hold, as well as large losses in the banking industry. [5][6][7] AAA rated mortgage securities trading at only 80 cents in the dollar, implying a greater than 20% chance of default, and 8. 9% of AAA rated structured CDOs are being considered for downgrade by Fitch, which expects most to downgrade to an average of BBB to BB-. These levels of reassessment are surprising for AAA rated bonds, which have the same rating class as US government bonds. [8][9]
As part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, Congress ordered the U. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 ( also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002 and commonly called SOX or Sarbox S. SEC to develop a report, titled Report on the Role and Function of Credit Rating Agencies in the Operation of the Securities Marketsdetailing how credit ratings are used in U. S. regulation and the policy issues this use raises. Partly as a result of this report, in June 2003, the SEC published a "concept release" called Rating Agencies and the Use of Credit Ratings under the Federal Securities Laws that sought public comment on many of the issues raised in its report. Public commentson this concept release have also been published on the SEC's website.
In December 2004, the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) published a Code of Conduct for CRAs that, among other things, is designed to address the types of conflicts of interest that CRAs face. The International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO is an international organization that brings together the regulators of the world’s securities and futures markets All of the major CRAs have agreed to sign on to this Code of Conduct and it has been praised by regulators ranging from the European Commission to the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Bibliography
- On the history and origins of credit agencies, see Born Losers: A History of Failure in America, by Scott A. Sandage (Harvard University Press, 2005), chapters 4-6.
- On contemporary dynamics, see Timothy J. Sinclair, The New Masters of Capital: American Bond Rating Agencies and the Politics of Creditworthiness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).
- For a description of what CRAs do in the corporate context, see IOSCO Report on the Activities of Credit Rating Agencies and IOSCO Statement of Principles Regarding the Activities of Credit Rating Agencies
References
- ^ Tomlinson, Richard & Evans, David (2007-06-01), “CDOs mask huge subprime losses, abetted by credit rating agencies”, International Herald Tribune, <http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/31/bloomberg/bxinvest.php>
- ^ {{Citation | last = Borrus | first = Amy | author-link = | last2 = | first2 = | author2-link = | title = The Credit-Raters: How They Work and How They Might Work Better | newspaper = BusinessWeek | pages = | year = 2002 | date = 2002-04-08 | url = http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_14/b3777054.htm
- ^ Wyatt, Edward (2002-02-08), Credit Agencies Waited Months to Voice Doubt About Enron, <http://bodurtha.georgetown.edu/enron/Credit%20Agencies%20Waited%20Months%20to%20Voice%20Doubt%20About%20Enron.htm>
- ^ “Measuring the measurers”, The Economist, 2007-05-31, <http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9267952>
- ^ Being Kept in the Dark on Wall Street - New York Times
- ^ Buiter, Willem (2007-09-21), “Basel II: back to the drawing board?”, The Financial Times, <http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2007/09/basel-ii-back-t.html>
- ^ Kerr, Duncan (2007-10-18), “Banks learn to reprice risk in post-crisis credit market”, Financial News Online, <http://www.financialnews-us.com/?page=ushome&contentid=2448964990>
- ^ Fitch Completes Review of All Fitch-Rated SF CDOs; Places $36.8B on Rating Watch Negative
- ^ Credit markets | CDOh no! | Economist.com
See also
- Credit bureau
- Credit history
- Adverse credit history
- Credit card
- Credit score
- Fair Credit Reporting Act
- Identity theft
External links
- Klein, Alec. (2004) "Credit Raters Exert International Influence" Washington Post
- Davies, Paul J. (2007) "How S&P put the triple A into CPDO" Financial Times
- Lowenstein, Roger (2008) "Triple-A Failure" New York Times
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