Articles Tagged withCredit Rating Agencies

According toThe Wall Street Journal,Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services is close to arriving at asecurities settlementwith regulators over the way they graded real-estate bonds. The agreement would resolve claims by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

The proposed deal is over six commercial real estate bond ratings issued by the credit rater in 2011. In July of that year, S & P withdrew a preliminary rating on a $1.5 billion security comprised of commercial real-estate loans. The decision made debt issuers and investors very angry. (The deal was later partially overhauled and eventually went to market.)

S & P discovered discrepancies in the way its ratings methodology applied for commercial real estate deals. However, it said the incongruence was not outside what is considered an acceptable range. Still, investigators were compelled to look at the withdrawn rating and other deals from that period.