Competition among rating agencies has certainly intensified. S&P used to sweep the competition with ease but, this year, Moody’s inched ahead. A greater percentage of participants cited its research and ratings on corporate credit, bank credit and structured finance products as influencing investment decisions compared to the other two agencies. However, S&P managed to hold on to its lead for sovereign credit, though it was just slightly ahead of Moody’s.
There were few surprises for the winners of the best Asian G3 research analyst and best local currency analyst, which went to Edwin Chan, head of Asian credit research at UBS and Frances Cheung, senior strategist Asia ex Japan for Credit Agricole CIB, respectively. Both had bagged those titles last year. But in the G3 space, analysts from Barclays, Nomura and Morgan Stanley were also recognised, while analysts from Barclays, OCBC and Citi were recognised for local currency research.
