Moody's makes a few changes, keeps letters

Thu, 15 May 2008 06:59:54 -0400

Moody's surveyed its customers recently, and they apparently were in favor of keeping the ratings agency's time-honored letter ratings, AAA and so forth. To many critics, these letter ratings mean little these days, but that is more rhetoric than reality. Still, the agency has some PR issues to contend with. And it is trying to make some hay with some ratings tweaks that the Financial Times has just written about. Moody's launched two new indices that would indicate how fast a security might lose a top rating if the economy changed. This is an obvious hoped-for corrective to the masses of AAA rated CDOs that suddenly ended up on the skids, resulting in mass downgrades.

For more:
- here's the Financial Times article

Banks binge on preferred shares

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 06:59:55 -0400

Financial services firms have raised $54.7 billion this year, compared with $25.3 billion at the comparable point last year (Dealogic). Bank of America has raised the most, $10 billion. Citigroup is not far behind, according to Financial News Online. All of this is not exactly good news. On the one hand, it's a good sign that banks are successfully raising capital. Of course, the yields the banks have had to offer have been rather hefty. And the fears of dilution are real. Same goes for credit ratings. One analyst says that Merrill Lynch may be downgraded in the wake of a $2.5 billion offering.

For more:
- here's the Financial News Online article