As the credit crisis unfolds, rating agencies have been properly identified as playing a central role in causing the crisis and misleading investors. What has been forgotten in this acrimonious environment is that in their quest to increase the market for their services, rating agencies also...

Recently, the European Securities and Markets Authority has aimed to reinvigorate its efforts to enforce the increase in competition within the credit rating industry. The Supervisory Provisions aim to explain, in precise detail, the rules and regulations for ‘Sectoral Competent Authorities'...

This paper studies the impact of credit rating agency (CRA) downgrade announcements on the value of the Euro and the yields of French, Italian, German and Spanish long-term sovereign bonds during the culmination of the Eurozone debt crisis in 2011-2012. The employed GARCH models show that CRA...

In recent years, the Credit Rating Agencies (“CRAs”) have been in the eye of the storm. Some argue that CRA rating errors — symptomatized by rating inflation or deflation — originate in excessive competition. This paper argues that the low level of competition in credit rating is a...

It must not be easy being a rating agency. Where corporate debt is concerned, the major credit rating agencies (“CRAs”) are said to be too slow and lagging the market. When the topic is structured finance, the agencies are said to inflate ratings to attract business. And when the subject is...

Credit rating agencies have been a core concern in the reform of the global and European financial architecture prompted by the financial crisis. The European Regulation on Credit Rating Agencies (CRA Regulation) entered into force at the end of 2009. Activities of credit rating agencies and the...

This paper addresses a pressing issue in connection with adequately tackling the recent financial crises: the regulation and supervision of credit rating agencies in the European Union. The paper gives an overview of the recently reformed regulatory and supervisory regime for credit rating...

In response to the decision by British voters to leave the European Union in the recent referendum, this article discusses what may lie ahead for the regulation of the credit rating industry in the U.K. With the withdrawal from the Union meaning that the U.K. must now establish its own distinct...

The paper analyses the factors influencing the sovereign credit ratings of the new EU member states along with potential entrants. We model the ratings of the three rating agencies using a range of macroeconomic and governance variables and panel regression techniques. The unbalanced panel...