Credit ratings have long been dominated by the “big three” Moody’s, Standard Poor’s and Fitch but a new firm, Universal Credit Rating Group UCRG, is being established, with aims to challenge the hegemony of the three main agencies.
The group, which is headquartered in Hong Kong, is backed by Dagong Credit, RusRating and Egan-Jones, from China, Russia and the US, respectively.
Richard Hainsworth, chief executive of UCRG, is vocal about the dominance of the three main rating agencies and argues that they suffer from a strong American bias, given that they are all headquartered in New York, and their ratings committees are also...