by the glowing carp » Tue Oct 04, 2011 9:58 am
around the world had their eyes fixed on the Federal Court of Australia today as the first legal case against a credit ratings agency went to trial.
And the case brought by 12 NSW local councils, who quickly lost 90 per cent of their capital after buying the “grotesquely complicated” Rembrandt-structured finance products in 2007, contains some explosive evidence.
“Smart” investment bankers had “sandbagged” Standard & Poor’s, “bulldozing” the world’s most venerable ratings agency into delivering its premiere “AAA” credit rating for a high-risk, and ultimately disastrous, financial product.
Just as remarkably, documents submitted to the court show these investment bankers were surprised to find that S&P didn’t even bother to do its own research for an “independent” report on the Rembrandt notes.
Rather, the ratings agency virtually cut and pasted a chunk of ABN Amro’s own analysis of the notes - even though this was the very bank seeking the credit rating and trying to sell the notes.
better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven