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German Authority Restricting the Number of Bank Customers
The state specification of the number of customers and the limitation of the number of customers who – regardless of market demand – are allowed to use certain services, are typical features of a central administration economy in times of financial repression. On October 5th, 2021, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) ordered N26 Bank…
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Assumptions of Implicit Government Support
Why is it not wise to ignore an important dimension of the bank rating, not even for capital adequacy purposes? According to the Basel Framework as it will appear in the future on January 1, 2025, banks incorporated in jurisdictions that allow the use of external ratings for regulatory purposes will assign to their rated…
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Clear Rating Target Defined
Samhällsbyggnadsbolaget i Norden AB (publ) (“SBB”) has entered into a binding agreement to divest eight non-strategic properties with commercial tenants for approximately SEK 400m. This exceeds the latest external valuations (as of 30 September 2021) by 60 percent. “We are selling the properties considerably above our most recent quarterly valuation and will use the proceeds…
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Micro and Macro Location Rating Tools Managed by New CEO
Heike Gündling will take up the position as the new CEO at the Berlin software house 21st Real Estate on November 1, 2021. Gündling has many years of expertise in the real estate industry and digitization. Most recently she was Managing Director Real Estate at the global data specialist Eucon. She held previous positions as…
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Moody’s Extends Pole Position with Bogard
Moody’s Corporation has acquired Bogard AB, a leading provider of data and information on politically exposed persons (PEPs) in the Nordic region. The acquisition advances Moody’s ability to help customers perform Know Your Customer (KYC) screening and research to address financial crime. Bogard covers over 17,000 PEPs, relatives, and close associates across Sweden, Norway, Denmark,…
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Rating Oligopoly Persists
“The EU requirements for providers of credit ratings have not broken the dominance of the three big agencies S&P, Moody’s and Fitch”, says a story published in Germany’s only stock exchange daily, Börsen-Zeitung. in Frankfurt on October 28, 2021. The author, Detlef Fechtner, reports on a speech deliverd by Steffen Kern, Chief Economist and Head…
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Bureau Veritas Helps to Find More Truth About ESG
Bureau Veritas has an interesting and promising position to support companies on their way to more sustainability. Bureau Veritas helps companies, governments and public authorities reduce their risks in terms of health, quality, safety, environmental protection and social responsibility. Those challenges are central to societal aspirations. Bureau Veritas is a world leader in laboratory testing,…
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S&P Global Ratings’ Revenue Increased 14%
S&P Global reported third quarter 2021 results with revenue of more than $ 2 billion, an increase of 13% compared to the same period last year. Every segment was delivering revenue growth. Net income increased 75% to $797 million. Diluted earnings per share increased 75% to $3.30 primarily due to the debt tender premium and…
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ECB Sidelines Private Investors
In a research piece titled “Covered bonds at a turning point?” published by Scope Ratings the dominate role of the European Central Bank (ECB) for credit rating agencies becomes once more very obvious. “The covered bond market is in upbeat mode. But while issuance has picked up significantly, public supply will remain well below the…
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Little Risk of Systemic Contagion from the Evergrande Crisis
“China’s ghost cities” have become a familiar trope in Western media. Beyond Kangbashi, with its other-worldly stadiums and museums, there is Chengchong in southern Yunnan province; Binhai, outside the central city of Tianjin; and Tianducheng, in the Hangzhou suburbs, with its very own replica of the Eiffel Tower. China’s ghost cities are in the news again because of the financial travails…
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How Can the ECB Still Make Impartial and Objective Decisions?
Scope’s new Board of Trustee’s member could not only prove to be an own goal, but also bring disadvantages for competing agencies.
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Olaf Scholz Did Not Care to Visit FIU
The raid on the German Ministry of Finance was the subject of a special meeting of the Bundestag Finance Committee this week. The background to the search are investigations into employees of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), who are said to have failed to forward information on terrorist financing to the judiciary and the police…
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A German Real Estate Price Affordability Index
A new study shows the most expensive and cheapest neighborhoods in Germany. It contains an evaluation of the current real estate prices, the minimum income that is necessary to avoid financial overload due to housing costs. The study shows an overview of the median income in the respective city as well as an exemplary calculation.…
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Rating Agency Violates Disclosure of Transparency Reports and More
CRA Transparency Reports 2021 “Transparency Reports” of credit rating agencies (CRAs) are published in accordance with Article 12 and Annex I, Section E.III of the EU Regulation on Credit Rating Agencies: (EC) No 1060/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 September 2009 on credit rating agencies, as amended by Regulation (EU)…
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Green Light for Greensill Was Legitimate
A Berlin rating agency remains as a scapegoat Now it is official: In the city of Mohnheim no failure of the administration could be determined before and in the insolvency of Greensill Bank in Bremen. The responsibility is put on the “investment grade” rating, which was issued by a local rating agency in Berlin. In…
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After the Raid on the Ministry of Finance
SPD candidate for Chancellor Olaf Scholz is under pressure The “governance” criterion plays an important role in ESG ratings for states. Not only credit ratings are influenced by good governance. Finance ministries have a crucial role in this. The Osnabrück public prosecutor’s office searched the Federal Ministry of Finance in Germany this week. The Federal…
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A Supermarket Portfolio Not so Super
A B (Single B) is shown on the Expo rating scale. In his Investmentcheck-News KW 36/2021, Stefan Loipfinger comes to a different conclusion, mainly due to the lack of willingness to provide information. The Exporo classification measures the relative risk using important criteria that are of great importance when making an investment decision in the…
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ESG Ratings: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
Headline ratings no longer enough Prof. Dr. Nils Stieglitz gave a welcome address to the conference “ESG Ratings: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly” of the Corporate Governance Institute (Prof. Dr. Julia Redenius-Hövermann) at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, followed by Prof. Dr. Zacharias Sautner, showing data of Hartzmark and Sussman, 2019, proving…
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Rating Agency Accused of Using Original, Then Rewritten Data
Refinitiv ESG’s rewriting not a one-time event Prof. Dr. Kornelia Fabisik, Assistant Professor of Finance, Frankfurt School, reports on some discoveries at one of the ESG rating agencies at the conference “ESG Ratings: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly” of the Corporate Governance Institute (Prof. Dr. Julia Redenius-Hövermann) at the Frankfurt School of Finance &…
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ACRA partners with EDB and Armenia
Challenge of maintaining independence The Analytical Credit Rating Agency, Eurasian Development Bank (EDB), and the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Armenia have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding that establishes areas for cooperation between the aforementioned parties, the key goal of which is to stimulate economic growth in the Republic of Armenia and…
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No Risk-Free Deposit World in this World
Dr. Tamaz Georgadze comments in the renowned “Börsen-Zeitung” on the “Causa Greensill“ Deposit platforms such as the German “WeltSparen” and “Zinspilot” are among the most important innovations in banking: Customers get more choice and can benefit from higher interest rates from other banks. Deposit-taking banks efficiently diversify the sources of their customer liquidity, which contributes…
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Billion Dollar Brand Name Given Away
Rework requested Just a few years ago, a cereal was linguistically associated with Kellogg’s. Anyone who spoke of Kellogg’s in Germany thought of cornflakes and vice versa, anyone who thought of cornflakes would also think of Kellogg’s. In the meantime, discount chains – from Germany for example – such as Aldi and Lidl have revolutionized…
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Standard & Poor’s. But “S&P Global Ratings”, Who?
Standard & Poor’s gave away a strong name “Landor announced that it has provided brand strategy and design services to McGraw Hill Financial for the company’s bold new brand identity as S&P Global. Landor partnered with the company to create a new name and design system that confidently marks S&P Global as the leader in delivering…
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Moody’s Work with Revenue Grid
Revenue Grid, a Mountainview, California-based revenue platform, raised $20 million in Series A funding. “800,000 sales pros use Revenue Grid to win faster and with more confidence”, says the website. The company is proud to have Moody’s as a customer. W3 Capital led the round and was joined by investors including ICU Ventures. W3 Capital is a family owned…
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Scoring Models for Occupational Disability Insurance
Increasingly, insurers advertise that they are working with so-called scoring models when calculating premiums for occupational disability insurance. With the help of additional questions about the specific structure of everyday working life, the insurer should be able to get a more realistic picture of the risk to be insured. Customers and intermediaries should welcome it…
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Mario Draghi’s Repeated Flashes in the Pan
Largely unnoticed, Italy’s stock market is currently changing from an ugly duckling to a proud swan, or rather to a hidden champion in international comparison. Or is this just a flash in the pan, like the one that the President of the European Central Bank has already kindled for all of Europe? This change is…
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RATING.REPAIR in the Holiday Month of August
Who is actually interested in RATING©REPAIR? Only subscribers are known by name. All others remain anonymous. Nevertheless, we can see how many views RATING©REPAIR has received per country by the day, week, month, and year. This is technically possible today. The above illustration refers to the last 30 days. If a visitors’ location cannot be…
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Which Rating Agencies the World is Looking for in Germany
Some surprising observations Many Internet users do not bother to memorize the exact domain of a website, but simply enter a clear keyword into the Google search engine in order to be able to simply click on the desired result and visit the desired website. The displayed search results are therefore of great importance for…
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False Self-Portrayal of a Rating Agency
The misleading self-presentation of a local credit rating agency in Hamburg raised the question of what kind of representations are allowed.
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Failsafe Test Case to Be Averted
Transactions of Lang & Schwarz Aktiengesellschaft are the subject of a tax audit, reports the company in a publication of inside information in accordance with Article 17 of Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014. The subject of the tax audit is an examination of the business of Lang & Schwarz Aktiengesellschaft in the financial years 2007 to…
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Art Markets’ Susceptibility to Rating Repair
The professionalization of an asset class can only be achieved with reliable rating offers. More artworks are offered and traded digitally than ever before. With 24/7 worldwide bidding, “Artnet Auctions” is a leading online-only marketplace for buying and selling fine art. New bidders, buyers, and consignors across categories, geographies, and demographics entrust artnet Auctions with…
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The Graveyard of Authorized Credit Rating Agencies in the European Union
Rating agencies have been registered in the European Union since 2010 in order to operate in accordance with the EU regulation on rating agencies of 2009 (CRAR). Dozens of agencies have therefore made use of the option, but also the obligation, to register or get certified. Rating agencies are only allowed to operate in the…
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Credit Rating Agency Authorisation 2021
Links to websites of the Credit Rating Agencies authorized in the European Union. The credit rating agencies listed below have been registered or certified by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) in accordance with the Credit Rating Agencies Regulation. Domains of websites are added. According to ESMA, the list was last updated on May…
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A Hurdle of Practical Importance
The clear divide between investment-grade and speculative-grade debt markets dates back decades. A number of central banks make their bond purchase programs dependent on minimum credit ratings. These are often operationalized by specifying rating symbols, such as the rating symbols Baa3 or BBB-. When a rating agency tries to win paid orders from issuers by…
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Rating Repair Pricing Model
What makes the price positioning of our rating repair shop so unique. Our RATING©REPAIR brand has only one price, namely only a single monthly subscription fee, billed by WordPress and the payment service provider Stripe. With this price we position ourselves between the monthly subscription fees of newspapers, magazines and other data providers on the…
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Art Ratings and Tokenisation Will Feed Artists
A new art tokenisation platform is important news for the art rating industry. The rating of an artist is the indication that helps evaluate the value of an artwork, the rating of an artwork helps to understand the investment characteristics of art. 360X AG reports the successful completion of first Proof-of-Concept transactions with tokenised art.…
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China Has Already Achieved its Goal for 2021
“The growth of the Chinese economy was quite robust in the second quarter with a plus of 1.3 percent, but will slow down noticeably in the third quarter.” This is what Axel D. Angermann writes, who, as the chief economist of the FERI Group, analyzes the economic and structural developments in all of the markets…
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Disclosure Requirements Are a First Step to SPACs Rating Criteria
No blank check for SPACs. Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) are shell companies that are admitted to trading on a trading venue with the intention to acquire a business and are often referred to as “blank check companies”. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) encourages National Competent Authorities (NCAs) to focus their scrutiny of…
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GlobalCapital Celebrates KBRA
2021 Securitization Awards. Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA), a global full-service rating agency, was named “Securitization Rating Agency of the Year” by GlobalCapital at its U.S. Securitization Awards 2021. “KBRA was founded in 2010 to set a standard of excellence and integrity, and we have been loyal to this notion since then,” Eric Thompson, Global…
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Kickers Don’t Hit
URA Research GmbH is once again coming up with new insights into bonds. After reviewing and analyzing the financial reports published in 2021, the URA ratings for 13 bonds were confirmed. For 2 bonds (FC Schalke 04 III and Katjes III) the assessment has deteriorated. The 4th bond from Schalke 04 and the 1st bond…
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Big International Banks Kept Beauty
In its 2021 banking study, the independent Swiss credit research institute Independent Credit View AG (I-CV) examined the global banking sector. A universe of 47 credit institutions in 16 countries – including the D-A-CH region – was scrutinized using a comprehensive analysis with a stress test. The good news is that the major international banks…
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A Liberal, a Banker of the Year
Who secures the Aaa of EIB. Liberals are not exactly popular among bankers, as they stand for competition and a market economy, where many bankers want state protection and privileges. This makes the award for Dr. Werner Hoyer, President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) as Banker of the Year, particularly noteworthy. The laudation from…
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ESG-Rating: Animals Count more than Humans
Mistreating workers is not as important as mistreating animals. Consumers play an active role in the application of ESG criteria, i.e. Environmental, Social, and corporate Governance data that refers to metrics related to intangible assets within the enterprise. A survey throws a dubious light on the values of American and German consumers. According to a…
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Ernst & Young No Longer Has any Equity on its Balance Sheet
Auditors have been making double-digit million losses for years. At Ernst & Young GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft (EY) in Germany, “equity” is on the assets side, namely as a “deficit not covered by equity” in the amount of € 62,715,000. The provisions, liabilities, deferred income as well as deferred taxes and fiduciary obligations exceed the company’s assets…
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No Vaccination Against Bad Loans
Keynote of Prof. Dr. Joachim Wuermeling, Deutsche Bundesbank, at NPL Forum in Frankfurt am Main. “NPL dismantling” provides one of the keywords for the speech of Prof. Dr. Joachim Wuermeling, Member of the board of the Deutsche Bundesbank. In his keynote at the Frankfurt School’s NPL Forum he widens the view and takes a look…
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Ilija Batljan’s Rating Shopping Spree
Are upgrades driven by improvements in creditworthiness or by hopping from agency to agency? The activities of self-made millionaire Ilija Batljan are too conspicuous to be ignored in the financial markets. Ilija Batljan came to Sweden from Montenegro. He moved to Sweden in 1993 during the breakup of his native Yugoslavia and in 1996 earned…
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Coping with Sovereign Risk Since 1991
This blog article is based on Country Risk – The Bane of Foreign Investors (Springer, 2020) by Norbert Gaillard. Both the number and percentage of countries in default reached record highs during the globalization years (1991–2016). In 1994, 114 sovereign debtors – accounting for 54% of all countries in the world – had failed to…
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Political Network Makes It Possible
Berlin network of politicians, raters and auditors. “Wirecard illusion factory only conceivable through political network”, is a quote from the Cicero, the German magazine for political culture. The members of the committee of inquiry have an unequivocal answer to this. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) sees Finance Minister Olaf Scholz at the center of the…
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Artec Technologies Upgraded
Artec technologies AG (ISIN DE0005209589) is once again awarded an eligibility status for central banks by the Deutsche Bundesbank as part of the current creditworthiness analysis. “The credit rating is comparable to an investment grade rating from Standard & Poor’s according to the S&P’s rating scale, the credit rating for artec has been raised from…
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Inflation Augur Sees Evidence
In May 2021, the US Consumer Price Index rose 5% year-on-year (after 4.2% in April 2021). “Projected over the year,” says Dr. Thorsten Polleit, Chief Economist of Degussa Goldhandel GmbH in Frankfurt am Main, “the monthly increase was 10.1%.” The price drivers were petrol (+ 2.1% compared to the previous month) and used cars (+…
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Influence of the Losses of the German EY
Are the French afraid of assuming losses from the German EY? After more than two decades at KPMG and half a decade at EY, Yannick de Kerhor left EY to set up a new company, Paris-based EKEM Partners. The new consultancy will team up with EOS Deal Advisory, the London firm run by two former…
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Court Ruling Makes Rating Difficult to Assess
Tesco and other UK grocers are affected. On June 3, 2021, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ruled that the provisions in EU law relating to comparability between two different roles based in different establishments, but within one organisation, do apply directly to private businesses in the UK and can be advanced…
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Credit Rating Effects of the Global Minimum Tax
G7 Finance Ministers’ communiqué will most likely not bring any credit rating improvements for multinational corporations. “We strongly support the efforts underway through the G20/OECD Inclusive Framework”, says the Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors of the G7’s Communiqué, “to address the tax challenges arising from globalisation and the digitalisation of the economy and to…
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Drawing Investors from more than 100 Countries
Mintos introduced a new lending companies evaluation model, Mintos Risk Score. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many existing investors at Mintos, one of Europe’s leading alternative investment platform for investing in loans, decided to abruptly halt or reduce their investing activity while they waited for a clearer economic outlook, writes AS Mintos Marketplace, a…
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Management Board of the Auditing Association of German Banks Changing
Former colleague of the later Greensill Bank Supervisory board member has left The Federal Association of German Banks (BdB) is drawing initial conclusions from the Greensill Bank‘s 3 billion euro compensation case. As the organization confirmed on request of the Börsen-Zeitung, it will analyze the structure of its auditing association and its staff with the…
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Investment Grade Møller Mobility
Møller Mobility thrives in symbiosis with Volkswagen. Nordic Credit Rating (NCR) assigned a ‘BBB-‘ (that reads triple B minus) long-term issuer rating to Norway-based car importer and retailer Møller Mobility Group AS (Møller Mobility). The rating agency’s outlook for this credit rating is stable. At the same time NCR assigned an ‘N-1+’ (that reads N…
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After S&P Global, also Moody’s on Fortune 500
The two leading rating agencies in the world are among the 500 largest companies in the USA. Anyone who thinks the rating agencies industry is a marginal issue should study the Fortune 500 list. Moody’s Corporation has been named to the Fortune 500 for the first time, reflecting the strength and momentum of its strategy…
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Automation of the Guarantee and Deposit Processes
E-Cautio, a Luxembourg-based InsurTech company and provider of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions, announced its new partnership with SCHUMANN. In the future, E-Cautio will use the CAM Surety software from SCHUMANN, the technology provider in the areas of credit and guarantee insurance. With CAM Surety, a SaaS solution, E-Cautio enables small and medium-sized companies to remain competitive…
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Does the Embellished Rating Cost Jobs on Bank Boards?
The rating of a local rating agency does not exempt you from the responsibility to form your own judgment
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First, ODDO BHF Takes the Chair, then the Scope Award
Conflicts of interest have arisen again at a local rating agency in Berlin.
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After Greensill, Scope Ratings Also Fails at UniCredit
A skipped coupon payment is not at all typical for a bank rated “A”.
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Some City Councilors Reproach the Use of Scope Ratings Instead of S&P’s and Moody’s
In the city parliament of Giessen, the processing of the affair about the threatened loss of financial investments at the Greensill Bank has begun.
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More Evidence on EY
Ernst & Young has been the focus of criticism in the Wirecard scandal since October 2020.
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The Role of Ratings in Greenwashing
Austria’s Financial Market Authority (FMA) warns consumers against “greenwashing” in the new edition of their consumer information series “Let’s talk about money”. “Greenwashing” means that a financial product is advertised as environmentally friendly, green or sustainable – i.e. colored green – even though it does not actually meet these standards. In this way, potential investors…
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The Losers of the Globalization Years
Five Worst-Performing Countries This blog article is based on “Country Risk – The Bane of Foreign Investors” (Springer, 2020) by Norbert Gaillard. I focus here on the countries whose reputation declined significantly during the globalization years. Table 1 lists the five economies whose country risk ratings fell the most dramatically during 1988–2013, as measured by…
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