Credit rating agencies: future perspectives

The dossier concerns credit rating agencies and their future perspectives. The amendments describe credit rating agencies as information intermediaries, examine their role in the financial crisis through ratings of US sub-prime and structured finance instruments and in the euro/sovereign debt crisis, and discuss the lack of competition, the issuer-pays model and conflicts of interest, over-reliance on external ratings, Regulation No 1060/2009, Basel II and the US Dodd-Frank Act.