Equitable slams Morningstar report
Morningstar's report suspending Equitable's ratings is inaccurate and full of inunendo, executive director David Forgie says.
Tuesday, November 28th 2000, 10:22PM
Executive director David Forgie says the whole episode has made him reconsider the value of research.
He says Morningstar's report "contains a number of inaccuracies" and is riddled with innuendo.
He says the text of the report and the phrase "ratings temporarily suspended pending possible downgrade" is prejudging the outcome of any future ratings process.
Forgie also disputes Morningstar's version of the chain of events leading up to the ratings suspension.
Morningstar says that a ratings review was scheduled for earlier this year, however it got delayed as Equitable kept putting it off. The research house goes on to say that it had got to the stage where the flow of information got so bad that it had no choice but to suspend the ratings.
Morningstar chief executive officer Graham Rich says he is not "confident about the current state of information we hold (on Equitable)."
He says Morningstar was not prepared to stand behind its rating of Equitable because the last full review was more than two years ago, and it didn't feel it has sufficient current information.
"We had reached the limit of our tolerance," he says.
Forgie agrees a ratings review was scheduled for this year. However, he says that Morningstar called off the process as it had heard rumours that Equitable was on the market.
Morningstar's policy, he says, is not to do a review when a change of ownership is pending.
Forgie says a number of people expressed interest in buying the business earlier this year (even though it wasn't on the market). Some of those dried up as soon as Equitable commissioned an investment bank to evaluate them. In the end the board decided not to accept any of the serious offers as the business was doing so well.
He says the review process was delayed on Morningstar's request.
Despite the two parties disagreeing on issues, the ratings process has restarted recently.
Forgie hopes it is done quickly and accurately, and that Morningstar retracts or changes its recent ratings alert.
Rich says Morningstar was trying to cover its position by suspending Equitable's ratings.
"We are not trying to stick it up Equitable," he says.
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