Credit Rating

evaluation of Risk Management associated with a party's Debt Financing

Equifax, etc.

Dun And Bradstreet

Moody's, Standard And Poor's

We can thank them for

• Enron
• Credit Crisis 2008
  • Jun'2013: Matt Taibbi covers a mountain of evidence gathered for a pair of major lawsuits by the San Diego-based law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd... In the Cheyne case, when one of the "quants" tried to hold the line, Morgan Stanley went over their heads to someone on the business side at the company to get the rating it wanted. In July 2004, for instance, analyst Lapo Guadagnuolo sent an e-mail to Morgan Stanley's point man on the Cheyne deal, Gregg Drennan, and told him that the best he could do for the "mezzanine capital notes" or "MCN" piece of the SIV – a piece that Drennan wanted at least an A rating for – was BBB-plus. Drennan responded in an e-mail that CC'd Guadagnuolo's boss, Perry Inglis, telling him that Morgan Stanley "believe[s] the position the committee is taking is very inappropriate.".. The ratings process shouldn't be a "negotiation," yet this word appears throughout these documents... The S&P report was so brazen that it even shocked a Morgan Stanley banker involved in the SIV deals. "I cannot believe these morons would reaffirm in this market," chortled the banker in an e-mail the day after the paper was released.