“S&P’s $1.37 Billion Reckoning Over Crisis-Era Misdeeds,” The New York Times
February 03, 2015
Nearly a decade after credit ratings agencies became a symbol of a financial crisis they helped create, one of the industry’s biggest players faces a costly reckoning.
Standard & Poor’s, a ratings agency accused of inflating its assessment of mortgage investments that spurred the 2008 crisis, announced on Tuesday that it had agreed to pay $1.37 billion to settle civil charges from the Justice Department and from 19 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia. Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC represented co-lead state Mississippi.
The settlement, which does not require judicial approval, signals that the investigation of crisis-era misdeeds has entered a final stage.