Credit Rating Agencies and Conflicts of Interest: Comparative Study of the Post-Credit Crisis Regulatory Reforms

54 Pages Posted: 31 Aug 2011

See all articles by Deborah Lipszyc

Deborah Lipszyc

New York University School of Law

Date Written: August 30, 2011

Abstract

When things go wrong, it is always good to find someone to blame. As the credit crisis started to unfold in 2007, credit rating agencies (“CRAs”) emerged as the villain – or scapegoat, one might say – for commentators and regulators alike. To sum up, observers accused CRAs of doing a poor job assessing complex structured products, which contributed to the crisis, especially because these products made investors extremely dependent on ratings. In particular, conflicts of interest have been seen as one of the main factors, if not the main one, why CRAs failed. To address these concerns, the United States and the European Union put forward a number of reform initiatives. These initiatives vary in their scope but they all seek to enhance the accountability and independence of CRAs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine these new reforms in a comparative manner against the background of the regulatory regime in force before the credit crisis.

Keywords: credit rating agencies, conflicts of interest

JEL Classification: K00, K10, K20, K22, K29, K30

Suggested Citation

Lipszyc, Deborah, Credit Rating Agencies and Conflicts of Interest: Comparative Study of the Post-Credit Crisis Regulatory Reforms (August 30, 2011). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1919960 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1919960

Deborah Lipszyc (Contact Author)

New York University School of Law ( email )

40 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012-1099
United States

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