CreditWeek

Special Reports

Several times a year, CreditWeek devotes itself to particular hot topics in the market with its Special Reports feature. Please click on the title to view additional information and purchase options for that issue.
S&P's Special Reports: U.S. Insurance Outlooks 2008 For North American Insurers In 2008, Discipline Will Be The Key To Success: Standard & Poor's outlook for the North American life, health, property/casualty insurance, and reinsurance sectors is stable due to several years of strong earnings, improved levels of capital adequacy, ample liquidity, and strong balance sheets. However, the number of ratings raised over the next six months is expected to be offset by the number of ratings lowered.
S&P's Special Reports: From Carbon to Green Can Not-For-Profit Power Companies Juice Up Their Environmental Standing? The search for environmentally friendly generation boils down to a simple choice: coal versus the other technologies. There are a growing number of ways to mitigate coal's environmental impact, including scrubbers, integrated gasification combined-cycle generators, and carbon capture and sequestration technology. These range in effectiveness from protective to almost wholly experimental. ...
S&P's Special Reports: The Fundamentals Of Structured Finance Ratings The Fundamentals Of Structured Finance Ratings: The complexity of the structured finance rating system has many people concerned. Since these securities have become an important tool in financial markets, investors need to know the particulars and methods for determining these ratings. Constant scrutiny is a mainstay of this process and the interaction between ratings agencies and arrangers is considered a pre-requisite for a healthy market.
S&P's Special Reports: Global Economic Outlook The U.S. Economy Is Ailing But It's Still Only A Mild Cold: It appears the U.S. economy is going through a tough time but, despite a weak housing market, the outlook for the future remains solid. The trade deficit is shrinking, inflation and interest rates are stable, and the consumer continues to spend. However, there still might be some roadblocks ahead, including rising oil prices or a possible increase in bond yields.
S&P's Special Reports: Various U.S. First-Lien Subprime Various U.S. First-Lien Subprime RMBS Classes Downgraded: On July 12, 2007, Standard & Poor's addressed the July 10, 2007, CreditWatch actions on 612 U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) backed by U.S. first-lien subprime mortgage collateral rated from the fourth quarter of 2005 through the fourth quarter of 2006. Standard & Poor's also addressed the CreditWatch actions taken before July 10, 2007, involving 70 classes of RMBS backed by first-l...
S&P's Special Reports: Basel II Creates An Basel II Creates An Array Of Possibilities For Global ABCP: Changing regulatory capital regimes and capital charges on liquidity provided to asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) have led to a proliferation of conduit structures that minimize third-party liquidity costs. Issuance of extendible notes using the collateral's market value as well as the securitized assets' cash flow has accelerated considerably as we get closer to full implementation of the Basel II Cap...
S&P's Special Reports: Russian Power Sector Reform Russian Electric Utility Reform: Generating Energy-And Risk: Will the transition from a state-owned, marginally profitable industry to a competitive, private sector-based one go smoothly? Probably not. Nowhere else has power restructuring followed the script. Will Russia learn from other countries' experiences in the past 17 years? Probably so.
S&P's Special Reports: Can U.S. Insurers Dodge The Next Downturn? After A Record 2006, Can U.S. Insurers Maintain Their Discipline? For the insurance industry as a whole, 2006's results were the highest in this decade. According to the Insurance Services Office, U.S. property/casualty insurers' net income was $63.7 billion for 2006, a 44.3% increase from 2005's catastrophe-laden results. Few disasters in 2006 and strong price increases from prior years let the industry catch the perfect wave in 2006 and achieve record profits. ...
S&P's Special Reports: The Leveraging Of America The Leveraging Of America: A Rising Tide Of Riskier Credit: You don't have to look too far to see that credit risk has been rising over the past few years. LBOs, dividend recaps, more aggressive financial policies, investors hungry for yield, and cheap money have made the credit landscape more challenging than ever before. Declining credit quality is nothing new, as credit ratings have been falling for more than two decades, but over the past three years, the slid...
S&P's Special Reports: The Credit Impact Of Climate Change The Cost Of Keeping Our Cool: Global Warming And The Economy: The planet's environment is going through an epochal upheaval in weather patterns. So what might this mean for economic growth? Clearly, the costs of controlling carbon emissions remain highly uncertain, primarily because of the technological variables. Still, as the technologies become better defined, the range of cost estimates is narrowing, and now at least some reasonable projections are becoming ava...
S&P's Special Reports: The Global Outlook For Metals & Mining Global Growth Has Metals Prices Gleaming: The global economy keeps chugging ahead, and with it so does demand for nickel, copper, iron ore, bauxite, and other metals. The combination of strong demand and weak supply has strengthened the credit quality of mining and metal companies around the world, and Standard & Poor's doesn't foresee any quick changes in either of these fundamentals.
S&P's Special Reports: Despite Risks, Global Public-Private Partnerships Are On The Upswing Despite Risks, Global Public-Private Partnership Deals Are On The Upswing: Governments around the globe have struggled to deliver important public infrastructure investments, as well as control costs without reducing services. To meet growing fiscal demands, governments are increasingly interested in forming public-private partnerships (PPPs) to improve service levels, control costs, and provide the social and physical infrastructure required by growing populations...
S&P's Special Reports: Islamic Finance Update: Global Expansion Gains Momentum Chief Drivers Behind Islamic Finance's Global Expansion: Mounting demand around the world for Sharia-compliant financial products and services is fueling the Islamic banking industry's buoyant expansion. More and more banking clients are choosing to invest in an ever-broader range of Islamic financial instruments available through long-established Islamic banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council states and Muslim Asia.
S&P's Special Reports: Standard & Poor's Weighs In On The U.S. Subprime Market Standard & Poor's Weighs In On The U.S. Subprime Mortgage Market: The consequences of the U.S. housing market's excesses, a topic of speculation for the past couple of years, finally have begun to surface. It will take many months for the forces set in motion by the subprime decline to run their course, and for the ultimate impact to become obvious. Thus, today's prediction could become tomorrow's missed estimate.
S&P's Special Reports: Beyond BRIC: Opportunities And Risks In Emerging Markets Beyond BRIC: Growth Is Busting Out All Over: Standard & Poor's expects emerging markets and not just the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) to keep growing faster than developed economies, especially in terms of total GDP. But trade imbalances are endangering the world financial system.
S&P's Special Reports: Beyond Asia, Uncertainty Awaits Global Automakers For Global Automakers, The World Is Flat-Except In Asia: A tour of today's global auto market is hardly the stuff of a sunny afternoon cruise with the top down. Instead, carmakers find themselves forced to contend with a host of hazardous road conditions, ranging from uncertain economic prospects in major markets to fuel prices that look like they want to go only upward.
S&P's Special Reports: Everchanging Health Care: Widening The Credit Chasm U.S. Not-For-Profit Health Care Rating Trends Seen Stable Despite Pressures: The same forces that drove improved performance for so many credits beginning in 2004 contributed to the favorable performance trends and rating stability in 2006, and should continue in 2007 and 2008. Standard & Poor's also has a reasonable expectation that 2008 will demonstrate generally stable credit trends, despite rising legislative risk and incremental sector pressure.
S&P's Special Reports: Midstream Energy's Infrastructure Boom Opportunities Abound For The North American Midstream Energy Sector: After years of underappreciation and underinvestment by parent companies, the pipeline segment is in the midst of a building boom for infrastructure projects throughout North America. The need to get natural gas to east from west is the main force behind this. A range of projects is on the drawing board, including a massive pipeline that would move gas from Alaska's North Slope, with cost estimate...
S&P's Special Reports: Global Economic Outlook Global Economic Outlook: All Systems Go For A Fourth Year Of Solid Growth: The world economy is poised to maintain a healthy rate of expansion in 2007, with an unprecedented fourth consecutive year of more than 4% growth likely, in large part because of China, India, and the U.S. Of course, any prolonged deceleration in the U.S., which accounts for more than one-fifth of global GDP and is the world's biggest importer, would naturally curb growth globally. ...
S&P's Special Reports: India: Back In Investment Grade After 16 Years India: Back In Investment Grade After 16 Years: On Jan. 30, 2007, Standard & Poor's raised its sovereign credit ratings on the Republic of India to 'BBB-/A-3'. The upgrade to investment grade reflects the country's strong economic prospects and external balance sheet, and its deep capital market, which supports a weak, but improving, fiscal position.
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