The aims of this paper are twofold: first, we attempt to express the threshold of a single "A" rating as issued by major international rating agencies in terms of annualised probabilities of default. We use data from Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s publicly available rating histories to...

Analysis of consolidated accounting data of European listed groups shows significant differences in some key ratios between countries. However, the figures do not reveal whether these differences result from a distinct composition of the countries’ populations in terms of branches of activity...