Moody's и S&P attract more and more international regulator's attention

/INTERFAX-AFI, Paris, May 29, 2008/ - International rating agencies Moody's and Standard & Poor's, having been criticized for the ways of assigning ratings to secured bonds, attract more and more international regulator's attention, that want to prevent the USA subprime mortgage crisis to happen again, the Bloomberg agency informed. International Organization Securities Commissions (IOSCO), having more than 100 regulators worldwide, appeals to independent review of the ways of assigning ratings. The companies should create new ratings for distinguishing among structured bonds and corporate securities, IOSCO announced. Christopher Cox, the Head of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and European regulators blame Moody's, S&P and Fitch for providing high level ratings to mortgage bonds, which resulted in losses and writing-offs in amount of $383 bn. caused by subprime mortgage crisis. He announced that new rules will be published by SEC on June 11. "These will be strong rules, based on subprime experience" - the head of the Committee said on annual IOSCO conference in Paris. As informed, International "Behavior Code" for rating agencies was published by IOSCO in December, 2004 for the first time. However, calls for increasing control over agencies` activities were conditioned by growing importance of analysts` opinion for financial regulators and their role in estimating difficult debt liabilities and mortgage documents. In offers, made by Committee of European Security Regulators (CESR), there is an appeal to immediately form an international body, determining standards for rating agencies. CESR intends to act on its own in case the world regulators will not quickly react for supporting. IOSCO will provide their recommendations for improvement of the behavior code this week; however the world regulators suggest that the decision on establishment of the organization for control of the rating agencies will need more serious actions. Rating agency Standard & Poor's informed that it has already taken a number of measures to increase transparency of the ratings, which correspond to the objectives, specified by CESR. Moody's also announced on supporting the CESR`s offer. [2008-05-30]