Credit Rating | featured news

Standard & Poor's Corp. helped cause the financial crisis by misleading investors with falsely high credit ratings on bonds backed by toxic subprime mortgages, federal officials alleged Tuesday in announcing a civil suit against the company.

The Justice Department and state prosecutors plan to file civil charges against Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service, accusing the firm of fraudulently rating mortgage bonds that led to the financial crisis, people briefed on the plan said.

A failure by Congress to raise the debt limit "in a timely manner" could lead to a downgrade of the nation's AAA credit rating, Fitch Ratings said Tuesday.

Standard & Poor's ratings agency on Tuesday upgraded Greece's credit grade by 6 notches, yanking the debt-heavy country out of default but still keeping its devalued bonds in junk status.

My husband and I recently refinanced our mortgage, and the bank sent us our credit scores during the process. Both scores were good, but my husband’s was 30 points higher than mine. This puzzled me, because we share the same spending and bill-payment practices.

Moody's plans to review its debt ratings of California cities over the next few weeks and said it believes the risk of default on municipal bonds in the state is rising.

Credit rating agency Moody's cuts Italy's standing and warns the country is likely to see a sharp rise in borrowing costs.

Credit rating agencies turned up the heat on Barclays Plc, threatening to lower its credit ratings on concerns over who will run the bank following the departure of Chief Executive Bob Diamond and an uncertain strategy.

Moody's Investors Service Friday defended its decision to issue a slew of downgrades to Europe's biggest lenders after several of the continent's banks hit out over the "backward" nature of the review.

Moody's Investors Service lowered the credit ratings of 15 major banks Thursday, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, saying their long-term prospects for profitability and growth are shrinking. The ratings agency said it was especially concerned about banks with significant financial markets businesses because those markets have become so volatile. Some of the largest European banks were also downgraded, including Barclays, Deutsche Bank and HSBC.