Trade in Financial Services:• Highly regulated sector• Sector opened in last quarter of 20thcentury• Some sub-sectors operate on aglobal basis• Market share of foreign-ownedinsurance companies in Europe 41%,Latin America 47% and Asia 12%...

We use a unique dataset of bond downgrades from a niche rating company that has been found to be reacting faster to publicly available information than its competitors. Using regime-switching models we propose risk measures to quantify stock return disturbances (distress costs) associated with...