The move was the latest blow from a ratings firm and could unnerve investors.
Realizing that, Schwab has hustled out two funds based on Schwab's equity ratings, which are simple, straightforward A to F ratings the firm assigns to equities.
In the very worst case, more than 2, 000 community and regional banks a quarter of the total could fail or be forced to merge, reckons Institutional Risk Analytics, a research and ratings firm.
Today only a handful of big firms have the sort of board that seems hand-picked to be loyal to the boss, chief among them being News Corporation, says Paul Hodgson of GMI, a corporate-governance ratings firm.
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To get some idea of how far computers can reach, take a look at Open Ratings, a Waltham, Mass. firm that helps corporations like United Technologies and Xerox evaluate prospective suppliers.
On October 24th Moody's, a ratings agency, downgraded the firm, citing its capital and operating environment.
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Specifically, the firm has attracted a whopping 24 Buy ratings, compared to just five Holds and one Sell.
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But with the recent ratings boom and a strong scatter market, the ad tracking firm anticipates a reversal of fortune for the 2010 kudofest.
While the moves are legal and disclosed in regulatory filings, "there are certainly some fairly serious red flags in terms of behavior that are raised there, " said Paul Hodgson, chief research analyst for GMI Ratings, a corporate-governance and risk-management research firm.
Derek Baine, a senior analyst at media research firm SNL Kagan, says OWN's ratings have sometimes been lower than the ratings for the Discovery Health channel, which preceded OWN on the same channel number.
Fitch Ratings, in turn, said it would keep the Bermuda-based brokerage firm on watch for a possible downgrade, depending on how the full refinancing of the loan goes.
The World Economic Forum gives Mexico one of the best ratings in Latin America for investor protection, better than countries such as Argentina (which recently nationalised a big oil firm).
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