Daniel Cash - Regulation and the Credit Rating Agencies: Restraining Ancillary Services

Regulation and the Credit Rating Agencies

This book examines the transgressions of the credit rating agencies before, during and after the recent financial crisis. It proposes that by restricting the agencies ability to offer ancillary services there stands the opportunity to limit, in an achievable and practical manner, the potentially negative effect that the Big Three rating agencies Standard & Poors, Moodys and Fitch may have upon the financial sector and society moreover. The book contains an extensive and in-depth discussion about how the agencies ascended to their current position, why they were able to do so and ultimately their behaviour once their position was cemented.

This work offers a new framework for the reader to follow, suggesting that investors, issuers and the state have a desired version of the agencies in their thinking and operate upon that basis when, in fact, those imagined agencies do not exist, as demonstrated by the actual conduct of the agencies. The book primarily aims to uncover this divergence and reveal the real credit rating agencies, and then on that basis propose a real and potentially achievable reform to limit the negative effects that result from poor performance in this industry. It addresses the topics with regard to financial regulation and the financial crisis, and will be of interest to legal scholars interested in the intersection between business and the law as well as researchers, academics, policymakers, industry and professional associations and students in the fields of corporate law, banking and finance law, financial regulation, corporate governance and corporate finance.

Daniel Cash is a lecturer in law at Aston University, UK.

Routledge Research in Corporate Law

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Regulation and the Credit Rating Agencies

Restraining Ancillary Services

Daniel Cash

Regulation and the Credit Rating Agencies

Restraining Ancillary Services

Daniel Cash

Dedicated to my Mother, Jane.

Contents

There are many people that I would like to thank for their support during the construction of this work, but there are many who have had a small, yet significant, impact upon my development; listing them all here would take more than this page, but a small group of my colleagues deserve a mention, as their support in providing a soundboard for ideas as the project developed proved to be very important indeed and I am particularly grateful. However, I would like to begin by thanking Mr Chris Riley; Chris highlighted for me the importance of incorporating different approaches into ones development and I will be forever grateful for the extraordinarily valuable lessons I learned while under his stewardship. In the same vein, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude for the vital lessons learned while speaking with Professor David Held. I am a diligent subscriber to the notion that to be a success one must first humble oneself and then seek to find and learn from someone who demonstrates the very characteristics one would like to, one day, demonstrate; being able to witness his humility, his compassion and ultimately his dedication to peoples development, has left a lasting impression and forms the foundation for my own approach to life I am genuinely grateful to have such a role model.

Last, but certainly not least, I would like express my sincerest gratitude for the support of my mother, Jane. Getting to this point has been quite a journey probably worthy of a book or two in itself! and it simply would not have been possible without the remarkable support that she has provided for me. While a mothers support can be imagined, it does not do justice to the support that was and continues to be, provided against remarkable adversity in a multitude of ways; she is a mentor, a leader, a confidante and quite simply an inspiration and somebody whose teachings I work diligently every day to spread far and wide. There are simply not enough pages in this book to express her importance to me, so I have chosen not to try. Yet, I am in full acknowledgement of my sheer fortune for having her as my mother and this work and everything else I do, is for her.