The US Department of Justice is seeking to advance a probe that is more than five years old into whether Moody’s Investors Service inflated ratings during the US housing boom, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The US government is continuing interviews with former Moody’s executives on whether the ratings agency bent criteria on how to assess structured finance products to win business from US banks, according to two people familiar with the matter. They asked not to be identified because the investigation is ongoing.
It is unclear whether the probe will result in a lawsuit, and any action against the company would not be imminent, one of the people said.
The US is wrapping up a case against Moody’s main competitor, Standard & Poor’s, as soon as this week, people familiar with the matter have said. The unit of McGraw Hill Financial Inc could pay about US$1.4 billion to resolve claims it bent its ratings criteria to win business. The world’s largest credit rater will not admit wrongdoing, one of the people said.
Anthony Mirenda, a Moody’s spokesman, did not return a request for comment outside of business hours. Patrick Rodenbush, a spokesman for the justice department, declined to comment.
The Wall Street Journal reported the recent interviews earlier on Sunday.
Moody’s has had success defending lawsuits. Of the almost five dozen that have been filed since 2007, fewer than a quarter of those cases remain, Moody’s general counsel John Goggins said on an investor call in September.
Ratings firms were blamed in a US Senate investigation for helping trigger the financial crisis by awarding top grades on bonds backed by subprime mortgages to win business from US banks. Downgrades on the securities helped wipe out almost US$11 trillion of household wealth, the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission said in its 2011 report.
The justice department sued S&P in 2013, accusing it of inflating grades on mortgage-backed securities half a decade earlier and of lying about its rankings being free from conflicts of interest.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”