Officials not interested in rating finance companies

Brook Asset Management’s Paul Glass told an Eriksen-organised conference last week that “almost without exception finance companies are underselling risk to ignorant investors.”

Glass says suggestions to the Ministry of Economic Development that finance companies should be required to get a credit rating from one of the international ratings agencies such as Standard and Poor's, Moody’s or Fitch has got nowhere.

“They don’t’ want to know. They believe there’s a moral hazard involved. I don’t understand that argument.”

Glass says that after pressure from within and outside the industry “the equity market has largely cleaned up its act.