Portrait of a credit rater
- Moody's, Fitch forced to stop national ratings under new rules
- Kremlin had condemned barrage of downgrades as political
Vladimir Putin’s homegrown credit-ratings firm is up and running and foreign competitors are already feeling the heat.HT: Mike Norman Economics
In the past three weeks, Moody’s Investors Service Inc. and Fitch Ratings Ltd. have said they plan to stop issuing local ratings rather than agree to having their Moscow branches regulated by the Russian government at the cost of breaking international sanctions. As the New York-based firms scale back, the venture known as ACRA is poised to fill the void when it starts publishing opinions in the second half.
Russia is squeezing the business of foreign-ratings assessors since downgrades it condemned as politically motivated last year pushed the sovereign below investment grade for the first time in more than a decade. The finance ministry and central bank plan to use ACRA to replace the so-called big three as their yardstick to measure credit quality of investments....MORE
