China’s Dagong Global Credit Rating is making waves again.
Dagong, which caused a stir this month by stripping the United States of its triple-A credit rating, now claims it “has been rejected by the U.S. government from entering the American market.”
A report in Wednesday’s China Daily cites a Beijing News interview with Guan Jianzhong, chairman of Dagong, who blamed “protectionism in sovereign credit ratings” for the decision.
China has made no secret of its desire to unseat the United States at the center of the global financial system. Officials there have loudly criticized American institutions, including the U.S.-based credit rating agencies, for their failure to act responsibly in the years leading up to the financial meltdown of 2008.
Just two weeks ago, Dagong published its first sovereign ratings report, prompting one wag to call bond ratings China’s latest export. The Dagong report grabbed some headlines because it awarded China a higher rating than the United States, while claiming to be free of the “ideology” that presumably infects U.S.-based raters Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s.
Commentators in China have latched onto this argument with a vengeance. A prominent finance professor recently argued in the China Daily that “the recent report by China’s Dagong will help the world break the U.S.-led monopoly over the global credit ratings business.”
The professor, Sun Lijian, went on to propose that in breaking that monopoly, “Dagong has not only safeguarded China’s own economic interests, but has also contributed much to global efforts aimed at improving credit rating efficiency and quality, which will help in a healthy and steady development of the global economy.”
This is stirring stuff. But as is often the case with news out of China, the latest Dagong statement itself is a bit of a riddle. Has the firm actually been rejected, as it contends, or is Dagong simply posturing?
An outright U.S. rejection seems unlikely. The firm applied in December 2009 with the Securities and Exchange Commission for status as a Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization, or NRSRO – the designation under which Moody’s, S&P, Fitch and several other agencies have registered with the SEC.
Dagong sought the NRSRO label even though it has no U.S. offices, rates no U.S. companies and has no U.S. customers. As a result, the SEC said it would have to hold hearings to determine “whether Dagong has a sufficient connection with U.S. interstate commerce to register as an NRSRO.”
In April, the SEC said it aimed to settle the question by July, but the next month the commission extended that deadline to Sept. 23.
The commission hasn’t issued a ruling, an SEC spokesman said Wednesday, and isn’t likely to do so till September — which seems to rule out the “rejection” the China Daily article speaks of.
“They hardly ever beat the deadline,” the spokesman said.
That leaves open the possibility that Dagong is simply tired of waiting and is lashing out, like so many others, at Washington red tape. There are signs of that in the China Daily article, which notes the contradictions within Dagong’s own application and describes them as a sort of rating agency Catch-22.
“Without being approved to enter the market, the agency could not set up branches or launch its business, and if there was no business in the U.S., it could not be judged if it obeyed the U.S. laws,” China Daily said.
Update 4 p.m.: Dagong didn’t immediately return emails seeking comment, but its Los Angeles-based lawyer, Philip Nelson Lee of Fulbright & Jaworski, writes: “We are now waiting for the Commission’s ruling that is required to be handed down not later than September 23, 2010.”