Law Commons^™

The Rating Agencies: Where We Have Been And Where Do We Go From Here?, Joshua D. Krebs

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

The credit rating agencies are supposed to be gatekeepers to the public securities markets. As “gatekeepers,” they are reputational intermediaries in the investment process. Other gatekeepers include: independent auditors, credit rating agencies, securities analysts, investment bankers, and attorneys. The function of these reputational intermediaries is to act as neutral third party advisors to the investment process. While these intermediaries are paid for their opinions by one or more parties to a transaction, in theory the opinions will be neutral. This is due to the thought that any resulting reputational damage from non-neutral opinions would severely damage long-term profitability, in exchange …