S&P Global Ratings: История и Методология Кредитных Оценок

American credit rating agency

S&P Global Ratings (previously Standard & Poor's and informally known as S&P) 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.

The company traces its history back to 1860, with the publication by Henry Varnum Poor of History of Railroads and Canals in the United States. This book compiled comprehensive information about the financial and operational state of U. S. railroad companies. In 1868, Henry Varnum Poor established H. V. and H. W. Poor Co. with his son, Henry William Poor, and published two annually updated hardback guidebooks, Poor's Manual of the Railroads of the United States and Poor's Directory of Railway Officials. In 1906, Luther Lee Blake founded the Standard Statistics Bureau, with the view to providing financial information on non railroad companies. Instead of an annually published book, Standard Statistics would use 5 by 7 inch cards, allowing for more frequent updates.

As a credit rating agency (CRA), the company issues credit ratings for the debt of public and private companies, and public borrowers such as governments, governmental agencies, and cities. It is one of several CRAs that have been designated a nationally recognized statistical rating organization (NRSRO) by the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

S&P has had a variety of approaches to reflecting its opinion of the relative strength of a company's corporate governance practices. Corporate governance serves as investor protection against potential governance related losses of value, or failure to create value.

S&P developed criteria and methodology for assessing corporate governance. It started issuing Corporate Governance Scores (CGS) in 2000. CGS assessed companies' corporate governance practices. They were assigned at the request of the company being assessed, were non public (although companies were free to disclose them to the public and sometimes did) and were limited to public U. S. corporations. In 2005, S&P stopped issuing CGS.

S&P's Governance, Accountability, Management Metrics and Analysis (GAMMA) scores were designed for equity investors in emerging markets and focused on non financial risk assessment, and in particular, assessment of corporate governance risk. S&P discontinued providing stand alone governance scores in 2011, "while continuing to incorporate governance analysis in global and local scale credit ratings".

In November 2012, S&P published its criteria for evaluating insurers and non financial enterprises' management and governance credit factors. These scores are not standalone, but rather a component used by S&P in assessing an enterprise's overall creditworthiness. S&P updated its management and governance scoring methodology as part of a larger effort to include enterprise risk management analysis in its rating of debt issued by non financial companies. "Scoring of management and governance is made on a scale of weak, fair, satisfactory or strong, depending on the mix of positive and negative management scores and the existence and severity of governance deficiencies."

On August 5, 2011, following enactment of the Budget Control Act of 2011, S&P lowered the US's sovereign long term credit rating from AAA to AA+. The press release sent with the decision said, in part:<blockquote>
" The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium term debt dynamics.
" More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011.
" Since then, we have changed our view of the difficulties in bridging the gulf between the political parties over fiscal policy, which makes us pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the Administration to be able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal consolidation plan that stabilizes the government's debt dynamics any time soon." The following day, S&P acknowledged in writing the US$2 trillion error in its calculations, saying the error "had no impact on the rating decision" and adding:
<blockquote>In taking a longer term horizon of 10 years, the U. S. net general government debt level with the current assumptions would be $20.1 trillion (85% of 2021 GDP). With the original assumptions, the debt level was projected to be $22.1 trillion (93% of 2021 GDP).

On November 11, 2011, S&P erroneously announced the cut of France's triple A rating (AAA). French leaders said that the error was inexcusable and called for even more regulation of private credit rating agencies. On January 13, 2012, S&P truly cut France's AAA rating, lowering it to AA+. This was the first time since 1975 that Europe's second biggest economy, France, had been downgraded to AA+. The same day, S&P downgraded the rating of eight other European countries: Austria, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Malta, Slovenia, Slovakia and Cyprus.

The company publishes The Outlook, a weekly investment advisory newsletter for individuals and professional investors, published continuously since 1922. Credit Week is produced by Standard & Poor's Credit Market Services Group. It offers a comprehensive view of the global credit markets, providing credit rating news and analysis. Standard & Poor's offers numerous other editorials, investment commentaries and news updates for financial markets, companies, industries, stocks, bonds, funds, economic outlook and investor education. All publications are available to subscribers. S&P Dow Jones Indices publishes several blogs that do not require a subscription to access. These include Indexology, VIX Views and Housing Views.

Credit rating agencies such as S&P have been cited for contributing to the financial crisis of 2007–08. Credit ratings of AAA (the highest rating available) were given to large portions of even the riskiest pools of loans in the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) market. When the real estate bubble burst in 2007, many loans went bad due to falling housing prices and the inability of bad creditors to refinance. Investors who had trusted the AAA rating to mean that CDO were low risk had purchased large amounts that later experienced staggering drops in value or could not be sold at any price. For example, institutional investors lost $125 million on $340.7 million worth of CDOs issued by Credit Suisse Group, despite being rated AAA by S&P. In 2015, Standard and Poor's paid $1.5 billion to the U. S. Justice Department, various state governments, and the California Public Employees' Retirement System to settle lawsuits asserting its inaccurate ratings defrauded investors.

In April 2009, the company called for "new faces" in the Irish government, which was seen as interfering in the democratic process. In a subsequent statement they said they were "misunderstood". S&P acknowledged making a US$2 trillion error in its justification for downgrading the credit rating of the United States in 2011, but stated that it "had no impact on the rating decision".