The US SEC requested Standard & Poor's the data on all managers that knew about the intention of the company to downgrade the rating of the USA. Referring to its sources, The Financial Times informs that the SEC suspects the agency representatives of insider trading. Meanwhile, The Financial Times notes that the SEC has no evidence of insider trading. The Commission does not have any precise examples of such leakage. Thus, there is much to reveal further during the inquiry.
The Financial Times suppose that proving information leakage will be very hard as many traders all over the world had been expecting S&P rating downgrading. Moreover, the agency itself recurrently announced that it can downgrade the US highest rating; moreover, the forecast on the rating has been negative for a long time already.
According to MarketWatch, if the case is initiated and the SEC manages to prove the fact of information leakage, S&P may well be deprived of its licence.
S&P published its decision on lowering the rating late on August 5, when the markets were already closed. As unofficial data shows, S&P report reached the government by noon of the following day. Officials discovered some financial mistakes in it totaling about 2 trillion dollars and informed the agency of these mistakes. Despite this, S&P insisted on releasing the document.
