评级仍然是默认风险的良好且稳定的指标

如何一个评级机构吗?一些看起来to think that you can evaluate ratings by looking at their impact on market prices. If a rating change is not accompanied by a change in bond spreads — or if bond prices diverge markedly from levels implied by ratings — some see it as a “failure” by the ratings providers.

这是错误的测试。评级和市场指标（债券传播和信贷违约交换价格）不能直接相比，因为它们从根本上不同。它们由非常不同的过程产生，并且通常由不同的因素驱动。评级提供了基于基本信用分析的信誉良好的长期主观性观点，而基于市场的指标反映了市场情绪的退潮和流动，安全性和许多其他短期技术因素。

如果市场的反应不同 - 或漠不关心 - 到评级行动，这并没有对评级行动的质量说出任何事情。例如，以欧元区主权评级。在近期债务危机前多年来，希腊和意大利等国家颁发的市场价值债务大致与AAA评价的德国政府债券相提并论，尽管其信用评级明显降低 - 即使在2004年进一步降级之后–’05. It is a good example of how markets are volatile and prone to over- or undershooting, whereas ratings remain relatively stable.

Credit ratings are forward-looking opinions about the relative creditworthiness of borrowers and the securities they issue. The higher the rating of an issuer or debt issue is, the lower the probability of default, in the rating agency’s opinion. To judge the performance of ratings, therefore, you have to look at their correlation over time with defaults, not with short-run movements in market prices.

分析默认研究

标准普尔的研究表明，自金融危机以来，企业和政府评级继续作为违约风险的指标。它们一直在所有地区和所有周期之间展示评级和默认值之间的近似匹配。评级越高，默认发生率越低，反之亦然。更高的评级证明比降低额定值更稳定。

在全球范围内，2012年违约的66家公司和金融机构都没有标准普尔投资 - 年级（BBB-及以上），其中大约80％的人在开始时被评为B-或更低2012年，全球90％的企业违约 - 包括所有9个欧洲违约者 - 有初始评级，是子投资级（BB +及以下）。10％的最初额定投资等级，平均时间默认 - 第一个评级与违约日期之间的时间 - 是17.6年。

自1981年以来，在全球范围内的仅有1.1％的公司在5年内违反了额定投资级，而额定额定投资级的16.4％的公司。评级继续保持相对稳定。2012年全球大约72％的企业评分保持不变，类似于过去十年的年平均值。

同样，主权评级具有出色的长期轨道记录。自1975年以来，标准普尔评级的平均投资级君主均违约了15年后的外币债务，而非投资级别的约30％。

主权评级与公司和金融机构的评级没有易用。在2012年，我们降级了17％的额定主权并升级了8％，而75％的人没有变化。主权评级在较高水平下较高的额定水平也表现出更大的稳定性。

As we have said many times, we were very disappointed by the performance of our ratings on certain U.S. mortgage-backed securities. We regret that, like many others, we did not foresee the speed and severity of the U.S. housing downturn. In other areas of structured finance, including mortgage markets outside the U.S., our ratings have generally held up well in the crisis and have continued to perform strongly.

Outlook for European Corporate Defaults

随着物品代表，欧洲欧洲投资级或投机等级的违约率仍然提升。2013年第一季度在27个欧盟国家加上冰岛，挪威和瑞士，有八项公司违约，导致落后的12个月投机级公司违约率（结合我们的公共评级和私人信贷估计股份组合）6.7百分。此速率从2012年末期的6.9％略有下降（见图）。

由于这些违约者主要是中型企业，所以暴露的债务仅为52亿欧元（69亿美元），远低于2012年第一季度的受影响债务的额外影响率为152亿欧元。结果，违约率按价值率下降2012年底的修正4.3％只有3.0％，大幅低于2008年开始的最后一个周期的5.0％。

Looking ahead, we anticipate that the corporate default rate will be 6.3 percent at the end of June 2014. This is slightly higher than our previous 6.1 percent projection for March 2014, although lower than what we have experienced in recent quarters.

雷曼兄弟控股近五年后，很明显，欧元区的经济仍然依赖欧洲央行的支持，持续恢复仍然难以实现。这对于较弱的周边国家特别有问题，例如西班牙和意大利，这些国家正在经历严重的经济衰退，因当地银行的信贷提供的收缩而加剧。但即使是其他国家，如法国，也不是免疫。

实际上，最值得注意的发展是法国公司违约的材料增加，所有这些公司都是赞助的杠杆收购，错过的原则支付是六种案件的一个因素。亚博篮球怎么下串虽然导致资产负债表重组的操作性能薄弱是潜在的大部分违约的常见因素，但是高度扩张，不良管理和一个笨重的综合组织是几个默认值的近似原因。这将在2012年底，法国的落后12个月违约率从8.7％达到10.5％，大大高于目前的平均欧洲违约率为6.7％。

We remain concerned about the broader effect of the financial crisis on the credit quality of companies with significant business exposure to the euro zone periphery. Larger companies, in the main, have been able to protect their financial risk profiles by refinancing maturing debt through the bond market. Smaller companies with weaker financial risk profiles, however, remain highly reliant on their relationship banks to roll over existing debt. Loan-funded LBOs originated in 2006–2008 have also benefited from collateralized loan obligations investors’ acquiescing to amend-to-extend transactions that delay the maturity of their leveraged loans.

在这方面，西班牙银行开展的最近采取的行动将面纱提升了对可能具有长期信用问题的公司贷款的广泛使用。具体而言，中央银行指出，西班牙银行似乎在申请会计政策的贷款政策中似乎不一致。因此，西班牙银行担心银行可能会低估违约风险，推迟其对减值的认可，破坏恢复西班牙银行资产负债表质量信心的努力。西班牙银行低估企业违约风险也提高了关于在其他司法管辖区适用的可疑谨慎行为的程度的更广泛的问题。

The U.S. Outlook

S&P Global Fixed Income Research expects the U.S. corporate trailing 12-month speculative-grade default rate will increase to 3.3 percent by March 2014 from 2.5 percent as of March 2013. Although a rise, that is still below the long-term average of 4.5 percent.

This forecast is partly based on assumptions that the U.S. economy will grow by 2.7 percent in 2013 and unemployment will decline to less than 7 percent by first-quarter 2014. We do not expect the Federal Reserve to raise the federal funds target rate until 2015, even though it is likely to taper off asset purchases by the end of this year or early 2014. We expect that the housing market will continue to improve and the manufacturing sector will benefit from the relatively cheap natural gas prices.

Investor demand for higher-yielding securities helped push new corporate speculative-grade-bond issuance in the U.S. to a record high of $98 billion during the first four months of 2013. Despite persistent investor concerns regarding Europe’s fiscal challenges and the continued uncertainty in parts of the Middle East, easy access to the credit markets has helped keep default occurrences low in recent months.

Investors appear to have become more selective in recent months, however. New bond issuance rated B- and lower comprised only 21 percent ($21 billion) of the total speculative-grade bonds that came to market in the first four months of 2013, compared with nearly 37 percent ($42 billion) during the last four months of 2012, according to S&P Global Fixed Income Research. A sustained disinterest in lending to companies at the lower end of the rating spectrum could trigger an increase in defaults, since these companies tend to have less financial flexibility and are often reliant on the credit markets for capital to fund operations or refinance maturing debt.

真正的测试

评分表现没有谜。例如，它可以在评级机构和其他人发布的数据中找到，例如，标准普尔（例如，其标准普尔）自由地提供给市场参与者和更广泛的公众。它还出现在欧洲证券和市场管理局维护的“评级比较”网站中，展示了欧洲联盟的18名已注册或认证评级机构的比较表现。

评级是关于未来的主观意见，这可能受到不可预测的事件和因素的影响;它们不保证默认风险。投资者有时可能反对市场价格。然而，证据表明，一般的评级继续与违约相关联。这是对评级评级的真实测试。

Yann Le Pallec是欧洲，中东和非洲的行政总经理，标准普尔差饷地租。

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