Anger as ratings agencies decline to apologise for errors

Ratings agencies have refused to apologise for mistakes made in the run-up to the subprime mortgage crisis - and warned more errors could be made in the future.

Giving evidence at a Treasury Select Committee hearing, the three major agencies - Fitch, Standard & Poor's and Moody's - refused to apologise for miscalculations made in the ratings of structured finance products before the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US - an event which triggered the global financial crisis. Standard & Poor's managing director Dominic Crawley admitted it failed to predict the "severity" of the US housing crisis in 2008 but declined to apologise when pressed by the committee. "We have repeatedly expressed regret about the assumptions we built into the sub-prime,...