Related Research Articles
S&P Global Ratings is an American credit rating agency (CRA) and a division of S&P Global that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks, bonds, and commodities. S&P is considered the largest of the Big Three credit-rating agencies, which also include Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings. Its head office is located on 55 Water Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City.
A credit rating agency is a company that assigns credit ratings, which rate a debtor's ability to pay back debt by making timely principal and interest payments and the likelihood of default. An agency may rate the creditworthiness of issuers of debt obligations, of debt instruments, and in some cases, of the servicers of the underlying debt, but not of individual consumers.
The Ambac Financial Group, Inc., generally known as Ambac, is an American holding company. Its subsidiaries provide financial guarantee products such as bond insurance to clients in both the public and private sectors globally. Ambac Assurance is a guarantor of public finance and structured finance obligations. Its common stock and common stock purchase warrants are listed on the NYSE under the symbols AMBC and AMBCW respectively. Ambac is regulated by the insurance commission of Wisconsin. It has its headquarters in Lower Manhattan, New York City.
Klaus-Christian Kleinfeld is the former chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Arconic. Kleinfeld is former chairman and CEO of Alcoa Inc., and former president and CEO of Siemens AG. Kleinfeld stepped down as chairman and CEO of Arconic on 17 April 2017. In October 2017, he was named director of Saudi Arabia's Neom initiative. It was announced in July 2018 that Kleinfeld would be promoted from director of Neom to advisor of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman on 1 August 2018, and that Nadhmi Al-Nasr would succeed him as director of Neom.
Moody's Investors Service, often referred to as Moody's, is the bond credit rating business of Moody's Corporation, representing the company's traditional line of business and its historical name. Moody's Investors Service provides international financial research on bonds issued by commercial and government entities. Moody's, along with Standard & Poor's and Fitch Group, is considered one of the Big Three credit rating agencies. It is also included in the Fortune 500 list of 2021.
MBIA Inc. is an American financial services company. It was founded in 1973 as the Municipal Bond Insurance Association. It is headquartered in Purchase, New York, and as of January 1, 2015 had approximately 180 employees. MBIA is the largest bond insurer.
Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) is a United States clearing house based in Chicago. It specializes in equity derivatives clearing, providing central counterparty (CCP) clearing and settlement services to 16 exchanges. Started by Wayne Luthringshausen and carried on by Michael Cahill. Its instruments include options, financial and commodity futures, security futures, and securities lending transactions.
Credit rating agencies (CRAs)—firms which rate debt instruments/securities according to the debtor's ability to pay lenders back—played a significant role at various stages in the American subprime mortgage crisis of 2007–2008 that led to the great recession of 2008–2009. The new, complex securities of "structured finance" used to finance subprime mortgages could not have been sold without ratings by the "Big Three" rating agencies—Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch Ratings. A large section of the debt securities market—many money markets and pension funds—were restricted in their bylaws to holding only the safest securities—i.e. securities the rating agencies designated "triple-A". The pools of debt the agencies gave their highest ratings to included over three trillion dollars of loans to homebuyers with bad credit and undocumented incomes through 2007. Hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of these triple-A securities were downgraded to "junk" status by 2010, and the writedowns and losses came to over half a trillion dollars. This led "to the collapse or disappearance" in 2008–09 of three major investment banks, and the federal governments buying of $700 billion of bad debt from distressed financial institutions.
Kathleen Ann Corbet is an American businesswoman best known for her controversial tenure as president of credit rating agency Standard & Poor's from 2004 to 2007.
From late 2009, fears of a sovereign debt crisis in some European states developed, with the situation becoming particularly tense in early 2010. Greece was most acutely affected, but fellow Eurozone members Cyprus, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain were also significantly affected. In the EU, especially in countries where sovereign debt has increased sharply due to bank bailouts, a crisis of confidence has emerged with the widening of bond yield spreads and risk insurance on credit default swaps between these countries and other EU members, most importantly Germany.
The Big Three credit rating agencies are S&P Global Ratings (S&P), Moody's, and Fitch Group. S&P and Moody's are based in the US, while Fitch is dual-headquartered in New York City and London, and is controlled by Hearst. As of 2013 they hold a collective global market share of "roughly 95 percent" with Moody's and Standard & Poor's having approximately 40% each, and Fitch around 15%.
In 2011, ongoing political debate in the United States Congress about the appropriate level of government spending and its effect on the national debt and deficit reached a crisis centered on raising the debt ceiling, leading to the passage of the Budget Control Act of 2011.
David T. Beers is a financial analyst and until December 2011 was head of sovereign credit ratings for credit rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P). In August 2011, Beers earned significant attention as the S&P executive responsible for downgrading the credit rating of United States Treasury bonds to AA+. Prior to this, the United States had maintained a AAA credit rating since 1941. He lives in London. In January 2012, Beers announced his appointment, effective February 1, as Special Adviser to the Governor of the Bank of Canada.
The August 2011 stock markets fall was the sharp drop in stock prices in August 2011 in stock exchanges across the United States, Middle East, Europe and Asia. This was due to fears of contagion of the European sovereign debt crisis to Spain and Italy, as well as concerns over France's current AAA rating, concerns over the slow economic growth of the United States and its credit rating being downgraded. Severe volatility of stock market indexes continued for the rest of the year.
Several credit rating agencies around the world have downgraded their credit ratings of the U.S. federal government, including Standard & Poor's (S&P) which reduced the country's rating from AAA (outstanding) to AA+ (excellent) on August 5, 2011.
Tokio Millennium Re Ltd. is a reinsurance company headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda with branches in Stamford, Connecticut, USA, Zurich, Switzerland and Sydney, Australia. The lines of business written include property catastrophe, workers compensation and terrorism.
The Greek government-debt crisis began in 2009 and, as of November 2017, was still ongoing. During this period, many changes had occurred in Greece. The income of many Greeks has declined, levels of unemployment have increased, elections and resignations of politicians have altered the country's political landscape radically, the Greek parliament has passed many austerity bills, and protests have become common sights throughout the country.
Douglas L. Peterson is the president and chief executive officer of S&P Global, formerly McGraw Hill Financial. He became president and chief executive officer in November 2013. Peterson has served on S&P Global’s Board of Directors since July 2013. He originally joined the company as president of Standard & Poor's Ratings Services in 2011.
The Venezuelan economic crisis is the deterioration that began to be noticed in the main macroeconomic indicators from the year 2012, and whose consequences continue, not only economically but also politically and socially. The April 2019 International Monetary Fund (IMF) World Economic Outlook described Venezuela as being in a "wartime economy". For the fifth consecutive year, Bloomberg rated Venezuela first on its misery index in 2019.
The corporate debt bubble is the large increase in corporate bonds, excluding that of financial institutions, following the financial crisis of 2007–08. Global corporate debt rose from 84% of gross world product in 2009 to 92% in 2019, or about $72 trillion. In the world's eight largest economies—the United States, China, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany—total corporate debt was about $51 trillion in 2019, compared to $34 trillion in 2009. Excluding debt held by financial institutions—which trade debt as mortgages, student loans, and other instruments—the debt owed by non-financial companies in early March 2020 was $13 trillion worldwide, of which about $9.6 trillion was in the U.S.
References
- ↑ "Deven Sharma, a Nobilian, is the new boss of S&P". Archived from the original on 1 October 2011. Retrieved 10 August 2011.
- ↑ "Deven Sharma, President of Standard & Poor's". Bloomberg's Business Week. 8 May 2011. Archived from the original on 13 July 2012. Retrieved 6 August 2011.
- ↑ "Standard & Poor's President to Step Down". The New York Times. 22 August 2011.
- ↑ "Officers and Directors". The US-China Business Council. Archived from the original on 25 February 2009. Retrieved 23 February 2009.
- ↑ "Home | S&P Global Ratings".[ failed verification ]
- ↑ "S&P replaces president with Citibank exec after U.S. downgrade". Reuters. 23 August 2011.