The Securities and Exchange Commission, it seems, has finally lost its mind.
Motivated by what I consider pure maliciousness, the SEC initiated a “cease and desist” administrative proceeding it deemed “necessary for the protection of investors and in the public interest” against Egan-Jones Ratings Co., a privately owned, 20-person firm based in Haverford, Pennsylvania, and against its principal owner, Sean Egan.
Egan-Jones, founded in 1995, is one of nine ratings companies that the SEC has accredited as “nationally recognized,” allowing the firm to rate the debt of sovereign nations, companies and asset-backed securities, among others. Notably, it is the only one of the nine that gets paid by investors instead of by the issuers of securities.
The bigger and better-known ratings companies -- Standard & Poor’s (owned by McGraw-Hill Cos. (MHP)), Moody’s Corp. (MCO) and Fitch Ratings Ltd. -- are paid by the Wall Street banks that underwrite the debt securities of corporate issuers. That is, the companies are beholden to the sellers of the products they are supposed to pass judgment on, not the buyers. That’s akin to allowing the Hollywood studios to pay the nation’s film critics for their opinions.
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