Experience Stern | News & Events

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "On March 17, [Jules] Kroll reeled in the city of Chicago as a client for its general obligation bonds, assigning a rating of A- and a stable outlook. Less than two months later, Moody’s slashed Chicago’s rating two notches to junk level (Ba1) after the Illinois Supreme Court rejected a plan to overhaul the state’s pension system. Fitch and Standard & Poor’s cut their ratings within three days, and each member of the Big Three set the future outlook as negative. Only Kroll had left its rating untouched, at A- and stable, as of July 2... Are those higher ratings justified? 'Kroll will say, ‘We’re better,’' says Lawrence White, a professor at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. 'That may be so, or they may be giving in to make the issuer happy. We won’t know until five years from now.'"

Read more