Standard & Poor's sued by feds over pre-crisis mortgage ratings
BY DANIEL WAGNER & CHRISTINA REXRODE Associated Press
Wednesday, February 06, 2013
2/06/13 at 3:27 AM
WASHINGTON - The U.S. government says Standard & Poor's knowingly inflated its ratings on risky mortgage investments that helped trigger the 2008 financial crisis.
The credit rating agency gave high marks to mortgage-backed securities because it wanted to earn more business from the banks that issued the investments, the Justice Department alleges in civil charges filed in federal court in Los Angeles.
The government is demanding that S&P to pay at least $5 billion in penalties.
The case is the government's first major action against one of the credit rating agencies that stamped their approval on Wall Street's soon-to-implode mortgage bundles. It marks a milestone for the Justice Department, which has long been criticized for failing to act aggressively against the companies that contributed to the crisis.
S&P, a unit of New York-based McGraw-Hill Cos., called the lawsuit "meritless."
"Hindsight is no basis to take legal action against the good-faith opinions of professionals," the company said in a statement. "Claims that we deliberately kept ratings high when we knew they should be lower are simply not true."
According to the lawsuit, S&P knew that home prices were falling and that borrowers were having trouble repaying loans. Yet these realities weren't reflected in the safe ratings S&P gave to complex real-estate investments known as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations.
At least one S&P executive who had raised concerns about the company's proposed methods for rating investments was ignored.
S&P executives expressed concern that lowering the ratings on some investments would anger the clients selling these investments and drive new business to S&P's rivals, the government claims.
"Put simply, this alleged conduct is egregious - and it goes to the very heart of the recent financial crisis," Attorney General Eric Holder said at a news conference Tuesday.
Holder called the case "an important step forward in our ongoing efforts to investigate and punish the conduct that is believed to have contributed to the worst economic crisis in recent history."
The $5 billion in penalties the government is demanding would amount to several times the annual revenue of McGraw-Hill's Standard & Poor's Ratings division. The ratings business generated $1.77 billion in revenue in 2011. McGraw-Hill's total revenue was $6.25 billion.
Joining the Justice Department in the announcement were attorneys general from California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Iowa and Mississippi, who have filed or will file separate, similar civil fraud lawsuits against S&P.
On Tuesday, California's attorney general filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court claiming that S&P's inflated ratings on risky mortgage bonds cost the state's public pension funds and other investors billions of dollars.
More states are expected to sue, the Justice Department said.
Rating agencies are widely blamed for contributing to the financial crisis that caused the deepest recession since the Great Depression. They gave high ratings to pools of mortgages and other debt assembled by big banks and hedge funds. Their ratings gave even risk-averse investors the confidence to buy them.
Original Print Headline: U.S. suing S&P over mortgage ratings
Associated Images:
A trading specialist at the New York Stock Exchange watches a TV monitor Tuesday as U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announces that the Justice Department is suing Standard & Poor's Ratings Services, saying it improperly gave high ratings to toxic mortgage bonds and helped trigger the 2008 financial meltdown. RICHARD DREW / Associated Press
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