Agency blundered over French rating
Investigations are under way after Standard & Poor’s mistakenly told people it had lowered the French AAA rating
CREDIT rating agency Standard & Poor’s blundered by ‘accidentally’ telling some subscribers it had lowered France’s AAA rating.
The mistake – whereby an incorrect automatic message was sent out to some subscribers to the firm’s services – could have had dramatic financial consequences, had it not happened just after the Paris Bourse had closed yesterday afternoon.
The false alarm lasted about two hours, causing confusion until the agency hurried to scotch the fears. It has promised to investigate and to shed further light on the mistake.
It put out a statement saying: “Following a technical error, a message was automatically sent out to certain subscribers indicating that France’s rating had been changed. This is not the case – the rating of the French Republic is unchanged at AAA, together with a stable outlook; and the incident is not linked to any monitoring of the rating.”
The error has come at a bad time as France rushes to put into place new austerity measures in a bid to shore up its AAA rating, with one of the other agencies, Moody’s, having said it is considering removing the country’s “stable outlook”, which can rapidly lead to rating lowering.
French Finance Minister François Baroin has demanded that it be made clear what caused the error and what the consequences may have been.
The Autorité des Marchés Financiers, which regulates the French financial sector, has also said it is opening an enquiry. It has also alerted its European-level equivalent, the ESMA, which has powers to check on the running of the ratings agencies.
