– McGraw-Hill, S&P Sued by U.S. Over Mortgage-Bond Ratings (Bloomberg, Feb 5, 2013):
McGraw-Hill Cos. (MHP) and its Standard & Poor’s unit were sued by the U.S. over claims S&P knowingly understated the credit risks of instruments that were central to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The U.S. Justice Department filed a complaint yesterday in federal court in Los Angeles, accusing McGraw-Hill and S&P of mail fraud, wire fraud and financial institutions fraud. Under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989, the U.S. seeks civil penalties of as much as $1.1 million for each violation. The company’s shares tumbled the most in 25 years yesterday when it said it expected the lawsuit, the first federal case against a ratings firm for grades related to the credit crisis.
“It’s a new use of this statute,” Claire Hill, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who has written about the ratings firms, said in a phone interview from Minneapolis. “This is not a line to my knowledge that has been taken before.”
S&P issued credit ratings on more than $2.8 trillion worth of residential mortgage-backed securities and about $1.2 trillion worth of collateralized-debt obligations from September 2004 through October 2007, according to the complaint. S&P downplayed the risks on portions of the securities to gain more business from the investment banks that issued them, the U.S. said.
“S&P’s desire for increased revenue and market share in the RMBS and CDO ratings markets led S&P to downplay and disregard the true extent of the credit risks,” the U.S. said.
Lawmakers’ CriticismRatings firms have faced criticism from U.S. lawmakers over how they granted top grades to securities that packaged home loans from the riskiest borrowers, leading to a credit seizure, starting in 2007, that sent the world’s largest economy into its longest recession since 1933 as defaults soared and home values plummeted.
According to the U.S. complaint, S&P falsely represented to investors that its credit ratings were objective, independent and uninfluenced by any conflicts of interests.
The company bent rating models to suit its business needs to the extent that one CDO analyst commented that loosening the measure of default risk for a certain security in 2006 “resulted in a loophole in S&P’s rating model big enough to drive a Mack truck through,” the U.S. said.
Bundling LoansBanks create collateralized debt obligations by bundling bonds or loans into securities of varying risk and return. They pay ratings firms for the grades, which investors may use to meet regulatory requirements.
“A DOJ lawsuit would be entirely without factual or legal merit,” S&P said in a statement yesterday before the case was filed. “It would disregard the central facts that S&P reviewed the same subprime mortgage data as the rest of the market, including U.S. government officials who in 2007 publicly stated that problems in the subprime market appeared to be contained.”
S&P, in its statement, cited court rulings that have dismissed challenges to the opinions of ratings firms. The company also said it planned to fight any lawsuits.
Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for S&P, had no immediate comment on the complaint after it was filed.
Before the case was filed, McGraw-Hill fell 13.8 percent to $50.30 in New York trading yesterday. Moody’s Corp., owner of the second-largest ratings provider, fell 10.7 percent yesterday to $49.45.
Complex InstrumentsAnalysts at New York-based S&P, Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings, majority-owned by Fimalac SA of Paris, were pressured to give their stamp of approval to complex investments in a “race to the bottom” to win lucrative business from Wall Street banks, the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in an April 2011 report.
The credit-grading business was targeted by lawmakers in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act after the collapse of top-ranked mortgage-backed securities contributed to $2.1 trillion in losses at the world’s largest banks. Reports from the Senate panel, along with the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, cited failures of the companies as a reason for the financial crisis.
While the 18-month recession ended in June 2009, with the global economy contracting 2.4 percent that year, the U.S. has yet to recover 3.23 million of the 8.74 million jobs that were lost. The unemployment rate last month was 7.9 percent, compared with 5 percent in January 2008.
State SuitsAttorneys general from at least two U.S. states have filed claims against S&P challenging its method of rating mortgage- backed securities.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan accused the ratings firm of putting profitability before accuracy.
“S&P ignored the increasing risks posed by mortgage-backed securities, instead giving the investment pools ratings that were favorable to its investment bank client base,” Madigan said in a January 2012 statement announcing the filing.
In a Nov. 7 decision, Cook County, Illinois, Circuit Court Judge Mary Anne Mason rejected defense arguments that ratings firms’ opinions were protected by constitutional guarantees of free speech. A status conference is scheduled for March 26.
In 2009, then-Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray sued S&P, Moody’s and Fitch at the U.S. court in Columbus, accusing the firms of issuing faulty ratings that caused five public employee pension funds, on whose behalf he sued to buy money- losing investments.
U.S. District Judge James L. Graham threw out the case in September 2011, ruling the ratings were “predictive opinions,” and that absent specific allegations of intent to defraud, the firms could not be held liable.
Appeals CourtA Cincinnati-based federal appeals court unanimously upheld that decision in December.
Cordray was appointed by President Barack Obama in January 2012 as director of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Washington.
In November, an Australian judge ruled S&P misled investors by giving its highest credit grade to securities whose value plunged during the global financial crisis.
S&P was “misleading and deceptive” in its rating of two structured debt issues in 2006, Federal Court Justice Jayne Jagot said in her ruling released Nov. 5 in Sydney.
The case is U.S. v. McGraw-Hill, 13-00779, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles).