Continued from Part 1…
East vs. West (and by this we don’t mean a New York-Cali thing)
Separate from its NRSRO application, Dagong had already irked the rest of the western credit rating agency community by being the first one to effectively downgrade the USA from AAA to AA earlier this summer (all the other major agencies still rate American sovereign debt AAA). And to add fuel to the fire, the Financial Times later published a report highlighting comments from Guan Jianzhong, chairman of Dagong Global Credit Rating, that likely further antagonized the incumbents. So much so that it even prompted a reply back in the FT from Harold “Terry” McGraw III, Chairman and CEO of McGraw-Hill which owns the Standard & Poor’s credit rating agency.
In the FT’s first report (interviewing Mr. Jianzhong), he was quoted telling the paper,
“The western rating agencies are politicised and highly ideological and they do not adhere to objective standards……China is the biggest creditor nation in the world and with the rise and national rejuvenation of China we should have our say in how the credit risks of states are judged.”
“On the corporate side……Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings – the three companies that dominate the global credit rating industry – have become too close to the clients they are supposed to be objectively assessing…….He [Mr. Jianzhong] specifically criticised the practice of “rating shopping” by companies who offer their business to the agency that provides the most favourable rating.”
Mr. McGraw III replied back with some non-directed comments like,
“Global rating agencies S&P, Moody’s and Fitch were being unfairly targeted by politicians, commentators and competitors all over the world.
“If you’re in a populist mood, you’ve got to find the villain,” Mr McGraw told the Financial Times in a interview in Beijing.”
but he also specifically directed a comment to Dagong in saying China’s Dagong agency would have “to stand on its own”, by publishing its policies, procedures and putting out assumptions and criteria in a very transparent way but “I haven’t seen that much on the analysis part.”
Mr. Jianzhong quickly hit back at McGraw-Hill in an Xinhua report saying
“the accusation is irresponsible for the western rating firm to label a new-born international rating agency as “populist”, instead of carrying out self-criticism on its own highly politicized rating standards.
“Standard & Poor’s failed to identify the debtor nations’ currency depreciation, which infringed on the interests of the creditor nations, as the sovereign debt default. Such practice is the fundamental cause weighing on the instability of the international credit system,” said Guan.
Guan also rejected reports that he suggested the government should have more control in credit rating decisions.
“It’s a total sheer absurdity. I’v never made such a suggestion,” he said.
“Dagong has been maintaining its independent, impartial and fair position, however, the independence of some U.S. rating firms needs to be questioned due to the close relationship between the shareholders and their clients,”said Guan.”
Clearly this is a debate that could continue on forever and it certainly appears that both sides have their own points to make. While western agencies like S&P point to China’s lack of an established long-term financial history, high contingent fiscal risks and shaky local-government finances when saying things like it could take another generation before it achieves an AAA-rating (from US NRSRO’s – which took 2 decades to go from an un-rated ‘satisfactory’ rating to A+), Chinese credit rating agencies could very well turn the very same arguments around in a way that calls into questions current American AAA ratings by pointing out things like the downfalls of relying solely on past performance without considering future circumstances (that is what kept the Madoff scandal drag on for much longer that it should have after all), contingent fiscal risks (i.e. unfunded future liabilities like social security, medicare and other large corporate pensions which historically have ended up getting shoved back to the government as in the case of the airline bankruptcies) and shaky local-government finances (no re-interpretation needed there, just look at what has already happened in Jefferson County, AL or Harrisburg, PA.)
See a few sample Dagong ratings reports here and here.
This 2-part editorial continues from Part 1
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CreditLime Additional Note: Putting the author’s views aside, Dagong (or any other rating agency’s) rejection (or acceptance) for NRSRO status will not prevent or hamper CreditLime’s long-standing quest for good-quality credit analysis and research regardless of source, country, ownership or politics and we will continue to comment on and highlight any and all credit rating agency research from around the world when warranted and as we become aware of it in relation to the credit derivative markets.