CDO Ratings to Fall as Losses Trigger Fitch Overhaul

(Bloomberg) -- Fitch Ratings may downgrade $220 billion of collateralized debt obligations as mortgage-related losses increase.

The New York-based company may lower the securities by as much as five levels after failing to accurately assess the risk of debt that packages other assets. CDOs with AAA grades that are based on credit-default swaps and aren't actively managed may face the steepest reductions, according to guidelines proposed by Fitch today.

Ratings firms are responding to criticism that they failed to react quickly enough as rising defaults on subprime mortgages in the U.S. caused a plunge in the value of CDOs. Fitch, a unit of Fimalac SA in Paris, lowered $67 billion of mortgage-linked CDOs in November, slashing some AAA debt to speculative grade, or junk.

``Fitch is acknowledging that it was overly optimistic in its default rate and other assumptions in its original CDO methodology,'' said Christian Stracke, an analyst at bond research firm CreditSights Inc. in London.

Moody's Investors Service last year downgraded $76 billion of CDOs and began this year with $185 billion of deals under review. The New York-based company said yesterday that it may overhaul its system for evaluating structured-finance securities, proposing options including a numerical scale and a designation of ``.sf'' to differentiate a structured-finance ranking from a corporate credit grade.

Ratings Challenge

Standard & Poor's, the New York-based unit of McGraw-Hill Cos., downgraded or placed under review $98.3 billion of CDOs last month, citing ``stress in the residential mortgage market and credit deterioration.''

Fitch's review of 600 CDOs referencing company debt and derivatives doesn't cover structured-finance notes, which package asset- and mortgage-backed securities. It plans to introduce the new criteria by the end of March after seeking feedback.

Fitch wants to ``challenge existing CDO rating assumptions,'' John Olert, head of global structured credit at the ratings firm in New York, said in a statement. The company wants to ``produce ratings that perform similarly in terms of default risk and ratings migration with the market's expectation for other asset classes,'' he said.

CDOs are securities that repackage pools of bonds, loans and credit-default swaps and slice their cash flow into notes of varying risk and returns that are sold to investors. Junk bonds are rated below Baa3 by Moody's Investors Service and lower than BBB- by S&P.

 

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