SEC New Rules for Credit-Rating Agencies --Still not enough

SEC adopts new rules for credit-rating agencies
Wednesday December 3, 11:43 am ET
By Marcy Gordon, AP Business Writer
SEC adopts new rules aimed at stemming conflicts in credit-rating industry

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal regulators on Wednesday adopted new rules designed to stem conflicts of interest and provide more transparency for Wall Street's credit-rating industry, widely faulted for its role in the subprime mortgage debacle and ensuing credit crisis.
The action by the five-member Securities and Exchange Commission was another government response touching on the global financial crisis set off by mortgage securities. The commissioners voted unanimously at a public meeting to adopt the new rules.

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox called adoption of the new rules "a significant and substantive action" that affects every aspect of the rating agency business and will give the investing public access to a trove of new information while promoting needed competition in the industry. After nearly a century of policing itself, the industry came under SEC oversight through a 2007 law.

The three firms that dominate the $5 billion-a-year industry -- Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings -- have been widely criticized for failing to identify risks in subprime mortgage investments, whose collapse helped set off the global financial crisis.

The rating agencies had to downgrade thousands of securities backed by mortgages as home-loan delinquencies have soared and the value of those investments plummeted. The downgrades have contributed to hundreds of billions in losses and writedowns at major banks and investment firms.

The agencies are crucial financial gatekeepers, issuing ratings on the creditworthiness of public companies and securities. Their grades can be key factors in determining a company's ability to raise or borrow money, and at what cost which securities will be purchased by banks, mutual funds, state pension funds or local governments.

The SEC commissioners last June proposed the new rules and opened them to public comment.

Among other things, the conflict-of-interest rules ban the rating agencies from advising investment banks on how to package securities to secure favorable ratings. Gifts over $25 from clients also will be prohibited.

Rating agencies will be banned from making ratings in cases where the agency made recommendations to the company issuing securities or the investment bank underwriting them concerning the corporate structure, assets or activities of the issuing company.

In addition, rating agencies will be required to disclose statistics on all their upgrades and downgrades for each asset type. They also will have to disclose how much verification they performed on the quality of complex securities, such as those underpinned by mortgages, student loans or auto loans, in determining ratings for them.

Investors will receive detailed information on the ratings process for complex securities, thereby exposing potential conflicts of interest for the agencies, SEC officials said.

The SEC commissioners also voted to propose and open to public comment other rules that would require rating agencies to disclose in interactive electronic format the ratings history information for all of their assessments that companies issuing the securities pay them to do.

Some critics, including investor advocates, say the SEC rules don't go far enough. They want new requirements to govern how the rating agencies are paid and to provide for the suspension of their licenses if they engage in unfair practices.

The agencies say they already have taken steps to increase transparency and will continue to make further enhancements in the future.