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Sustainability Rating Agencies Vs Credit Rating Agencies: The Battle To Serve The Mainstream Investor 1st Edition Daniel Cash Available Any Format

The document discusses the competition between sustainability rating agencies and credit rating agencies in serving mainstream investors, highlighting the increasing demand for ESG ratings. It outlines the complexities of the sustainability rating industry, the challenges faced by ESG agencies, and the evolving role of credit rating agencies in integrating ESG factors. The text emphasizes the need for standardization and quality information in the ratings to meet investor expectations and navigate regulatory developments.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
9 views150 pages

Sustainability Rating Agencies Vs Credit Rating Agencies: The Battle To Serve The Mainstream Investor 1st Edition Daniel Cash Available Any Format

The document discusses the competition between sustainability rating agencies and credit rating agencies in serving mainstream investors, highlighting the increasing demand for ESG ratings. It outlines the complexities of the sustainability rating industry, the challenges faced by ESG agencies, and the evolving role of credit rating agencies in integrating ESG factors. The text emphasizes the need for standardization and quality information in the ratings to meet investor expectations and navigate regulatory developments.

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN IMPACT FINANCE

Sustainability Rating Agencies


vs Credit Rating Agencies
The Battle to Serve the Mainstream Investor
Daniel Cash
Palgrave Studies in Impact Finance

Series Editor
Mario La Torre, Facoltà di Economia, Dept Management,
Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
The Palgrave Studies in Impact Finance series provides a valuable scien-
tific ‘hub’ for researchers, professionals and policy makers involved in
Impact finance and related topics. It includes studies in the social, polit-
ical, environmental and ethical impact of finance, exploring all aspects
of impact finance and socially responsible investment, including policy
issues, financial instruments, markets and clients, standards, regulations
and financial management, with a particular focus on impact investments
and microfinance.
Titles feature the most recent empirical analysis with a theoretical
approach, including up to date and innovative studies that cover issues
which impact finance and society globally.

More information about this series at


http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14621
Daniel Cash

Sustainability Rating
Agencies vs Credit
Rating Agencies
The Battle to Serve the Mainstream Investor
Daniel Cash
Aston University
Birmingham, UK

ISSN 2662-5105 ISSN 2662-5113 (electronic)


Palgrave Studies in Impact Finance
ISBN 978-3-030-71692-9 ISBN 978-3-030-71693-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71693-6

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.

Cover credit: Henrik Sorensen

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents

1 Introduction 1
2 The ‘Mainstreaming’ of Responsible Investment 5
2.1 Definitional Complexity and the Origins
of the Movement 6
2.2 ‘Mainstreamisation’ and ESG Integration 15
2.3 Constraints on a Concept 21
2.4 The Reality of an Ideal 25
3 The Sustainability Rating Industry 33
3.1 The Development of the Corporate Sustainability
System Industry: A ‘Chaotic Universe’ 35
3.1.1 CDP Climate, Water, and Forest Scores 38
3.1.2 RobecoSAM 39
3.1.3 Sustainalytics 39
3.1.4 MSCI ESG Ratings 39
3.1.5 Bloomberg (ESG Scores) 40
3.1.6 ISS-Oekom 40
3.1.7 FTSE Russell ESG Ratings 41
3.1.8 EcoVadis 41
3.1.9 Thomson Reuters ESG Scores 42
3.1.10 Vigeo-Eiris 42
3.1.11 Standard Ethics 43
3.2 Methodologies in Focus 43

v
vi CONTENTS

3.2.1 Sustainalytics 44
3.2.2 MSCI ESG Scores 46
3.3 Problems Affecting the CSS Universe 50
4 The Credit Rating Agencies 59
4.1 The Credit Rating Picture 60
4.1.1 The Trajectory of a Binding Relationship 61
4.2 The Credit Rating Agencies and ESG 69
4.2.1 The Principles for Responsible Investment 71
4.2.2 S&P’s Reaction to the Investor Base 77
4.2.3 Moody’s Reaction to the Investor Base 79
4.2.4 Fitch Ratings’ Reaction to the Investor Base 81
4.3 The Credit Rating Agencies Continue to Move Forward 83
5 ‘An Undercurrent of Need’: Understanding
the Dynamics of the Responsible Rating Relationship 89
5.1 Institutional Investor Supremacy 90
5.2 The Need for Standardisationn 95
5.3 Signalling 97
5.4 The Relevance of the Natural Oligopoly 103
6 Who Will Triumph? 111
6.1 Standard Setting at the Global Level 112
6.2 The U.S. Experience 116
6.3 The European Experience 122
6.4 ‘To the Victor Go the Spoils’ 130
6.4.1 One Last Attempt at Standardisation? 130
6.4.2 What the Sustainability Environment Means
for the CSS and Credit Rating Industries 134
7 Conclusion 143

Index 147
CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In reading the title of this book, you would be forgiven for thinking
‘what battle?’ The ESG rating agencies, and the credit rating agencies,
are two different industries. Though colloquially adjoined by the concept
of rating, they serve two different purposes. The credit rating agencies
serve to assess the creditworthiness of an entity and if ESG issues are of
material relevance, then they should be considering those issues as well
as financial issues. The ESG rating agencies exist to consider the sustain-
ability of an entity, and then rate/rank it accordingly. In the light of
the potential ‘mainstreamisation’ of the sustainable investor movement,
there is increasing business being sent the way of the ESG rating agen-
cies. However, there have since been a number of research endeavours
that have identified key flaws in the delivery of those ESG-related ratings,
which is calling into question the suitability of those agencies to meet this
new demand.
The notion of a ‘battle’ between these two industries to serve this new
mainstream investor base is not widely considered, but it has been identi-
fied. An interesting article in the Financial Times in 2019, entitled ‘credit
rating agencies join battle for ESG supremacy’ suggested that:

A flurry of dealmaking has begun among firms that provide companies with
environmental, social and governance ratings, fed by increasing demand for
the data among investors and regulators. The sector has traditionally been
dominated by index providers such as MSCI and a handful of specialist

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1


Switzerland AG 2021
D. Cash, Sustainability Rating Agencies vs Credit Rating Agencies,
Palgrave Studies in Impact Finance,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71693-6_1
2 D. CASH

firms, such as Sustainalytics. Now Moody’s and S&P Global, two of the
big three credit rating agencies, are elbowing their way in, offering separate
ESG scores on companies in addition to their traditional assessments of
creditworthiness.1

The article continued by discussing how the market for ESG information
is growing all the time, and that the credit rating agencies are well aware
of this. Whilst a number of aspects would need to be added to the credit
rating agencies’ offerings, it was very much suggested that the two indus-
tries would come into contact at some point for the lucrative rewards that
awaited them for adjoining to the movement of sustainable investment.
It is always wise to write a book like this, as if the reader is uninitiated
with the world of credit ratings, because it is a somewhat niche element
of the financial sector even though its impact came to light massively in
the Financial Crisis. Nevertheless, this article in the FT made me wonder
of what may affect that battle, and how it would play out—that is what
this book is built on. In order to examine these questions further, we
shall embark upon a journey that considers the development of the ‘main-
streamisation’ of the concept of sustainable investment, the histories and
trajectories of the two industries, the underlying dynamics of the rating
relationship, and then after reviewing the regulatory developments in the
area of non-financial informational disclosure, we shall conclude with an
assessment of who is likely to win this ‘battle’ that has been predicted.
The mainstreamisation of the concept of investing in a responsible
and sustainable way is well under way. It is a direct response to the
Financial Crisis and the actions of market participants who prioritised
short-termism and an apparently blind faith in third-party verifiers of
credit risk. The movement aims to force investors to consider elements
of ESG—Environmental, Social, and Governance factors—into their deci-
sion making, which has the hope of forcing issuers to rise to the challenge
also attached to it. The movement has been progressing, but is hitting
snags along the way not that the leading investors are starting to turn
their attention to it. On significant snag is the flow of information. From
the issuers, investors want higher quality information. From the third-
parties like ESG rating agencies and credit rating agencies, the investors
want that higher quality information to be as standardised as possible,
so that performance over industries and regions can be compared. As we
shall see, there have been a number of initiatives developed that want
to bring these requests to fruition, but they are also finding significant
1 INTRODUCTION 3

problems along the way. Now, with the E.U. and the U.S. taking very
different approaches, there is even more divergence on the global scene
and divergence is precisely what the investors do not want.
To assist with these issues, the ESG rating agencies and credit rating
agencies are being challenged by a variety of initiatives to step up and
provide solutions. Global initiatives like the Principles for Responsible
Investment (PRI) have aligned themselves with the credit rating agen-
cies to encourage them to a. increase their dialogue with investors and
then b. provide more of what the investors require. This is underway and
as we shall see in Chapter 3, the credit rating agencies are purposively
and decisively turning their attention towards this nascent but potentially
lucrative market. For the ESG rating agencies, their relatively younger
market is attempting to cope with the pressures that come with serving
the mainstream, and it is running into difficulties. How they handle the
pressure that is building in the market for them will fundamentally deter-
mine the future of their industry, because the presence of much bigger
market players suggests that if they do not get it right, their industry will
not survive to tell the story. Therefore, in Chapter 2, we shall look at
the industry, clear up some terminological problems in the literature, and
then seek to understand better the chances of the industry overcoming
the difficulties that have been identified.
In Chapter 4, we shall embark upon a really deep excavation of the
‘rating dynamic’ as I call it. Whether in relation to the ESG rating agency
dynamic or the credit rating dynamic, there are fundamental truths that
affect the balance between the parties and to have a hope of predicting
who may prevail out of this prophesied battle it is important to know
how that dynamic works. There are key elements, such as the need to
‘signal’, reduce competitive pressures, and extract the benefits from an
oligopolistic model that need to be considered, and we shall do that.
This leads us to the final chapter which will first present the regula-
tory and cultural developments in both the U.S. and the E.U. These
two entities have been chosen because one is the home of the majority
of these rating entities, and the other is attempting to lead the world
in issues of sustainability and also disclosure. Other entities are worth
mentioning of course, like China, but their relationships with the credit
rating entities are much newer, less developed, and impacted by a whole
host of different issues (like political models, etc.) Once that is estab-
lished, we shall consider some private initiatives before then concluding
4 D. CASH

with analysing some potential scenarios that may take effect, and then
decide which is the more likely to come to pass.
The ESG rating agencies are under pressure, and the credit rating agen-
cies are joyfully adding to it. The rewards for aligning oneself to this
market could be momentous, and the market knows it. The trajectory
of the two industries has been stark recently, with the ESG rating agen-
cies needing to defend their practices and the potential of forthcoming
regulatory frameworks for the first time in their history, whilst the credit
rating agencies have consolidated since the Crisis and are going ‘full steam
ahead’ towards this new and exciting marketplace for them. However,
they themselves are constrained, and these constraints are constantly on
the mind of the rating agencies, i.e. liability. The credit rating agencies
are acutely aware of any potential liability that they are exposed to, and
that fear is real in this new market given that they will have to espouse
their opinion more than they usually do. But, for the ESG rating agen-
cies, the prospect of the market or a region cracking the code on either
a. increasing the informational flow in the market, or better still b. stan-
dardising the disclosure of that information, provide it with a glimmer of
hope that they can develop their own credit rating industry-like trajec-
tory and become powerhouses themselves. The next few years will really
bring these two contrasting developments into focus and, potentially, into
conflict. What we need to do is consider how that may look, why it will
be, and what the outcome may be.

Note
1. Billy Nauman, ‘Credit Rating Agencies Join Battle for ESG Supremacy’
(2019) Financial Times (Sept 17). https://www.ft.com/content/59f
60306-d671-11e9-8367-807ebd53ab77 (accessed 04/01/2021).
CHAPTER 2

The ‘Mainstreaming’ of Responsible


Investment

The Financial Crisis, an event which defined the lives of so many, is righty
seen as an incredibly negative moment in recent history. Livelihoods were
ruined, economies crashed, and large swathes of society have been living
with the financial repercussions ever since. Furthermore, the era was to
become a seedbed for a political revolution that saw Donald Trump
elected to the Office of President of the U.S., whilst on the other side of
the Atlantic Ocean the British electorate decided to leave the European
Union. Infighting within the E.U. sprouted in the wake of the upheaval,
with populist governments springing up in places like Hungary. Now, the
E.U. is pursuing a less-is-more approach as the bloc enters unchartered
territory with its authority on the line. In the East, China continues to flex
its political muscles in the region, backed by an ever-growing economy
and an expansive foreign policy that has seen the Belt-and-Road initia-
tive continue to grow. Political hot potatoes like the governance of Hong
Kong have been handled in an authoritarian manner, all amidst a global
trade war with the U.S. In the U.S., the country has been gripped by
social upheaval in the wake of a number of high-profile killings of black
men and women at the hands of police. Then, almost a century after the
outbreak of the so-called Spanish Flu, the world has been engulfed by
the COVID-19 ‘Coronavirus’. This virus has led to the world, essentially,
being ‘locked down’ with the consequence being that economic, political,
and overarching social divisions and problems have become heightened

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 5


Switzerland AG 2021
D. Cash, Sustainability Rating Agencies vs Credit Rating Agencies,
Palgrave Studies in Impact Finance,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71693-6_2
6 D. CASH

for all to see. However, the Financial Crisis did initiate a movement that
has continued at a rapid pace and is beginning to impact upon the ‘main-
stream’ financial arena; that movement was to make modern finance more
‘responsible’.
Making modern finance more ‘responsible’ arguably makes sense in the
wake of what I have described above. Seeking to make modern finance
consider more than just the potential financial return from their actions,
or seeking to expand the time horizons that are considered in financial
circles, simply makes a lot of sense when we consider what caused the
Financial Crisis. However, and unsurprisingly, things are not that simple.
When I say ‘financial arena’, what do I mean? Are there particular targets
for this movement, or is the aim to change the wider culture? When I
say that an aim is to increase the time horizons which are considered,
then how long should one aim for? How long is material for effec-
tive decisions to be made for financial entities? If the aim is to make
modern finance consider more than just the potential return, then what
should they consider? Should said considerations be externally mandated,
or should financial entities be allowed to develop their own understanding
of what should be considered? Would allowing financial entities to choose,
be the most efficient approach, and would those entities even want that
freedom? As you can clearly see, this issue is extraordinarily complex. Even
more so, what if the aim was not even agreed upon! What if we did not
even have a standardised definition for the movement we want to develop?
Unfortunately, this is absolutely the case. As it is not my intention to
contribute to that complexity, I would like to digress for a moment and
look at the importance of clarifying, definitionally, what we are looking at
in this book.

2.1 Definitional Complexity


and the Origins of the Movement
The history of investing for a reason other than purely for financial gain
is a long and storied one. We will look more at this history in the next
subsection, but there are a few definitions that get used in the liter-
ature and wider financial arena that may confuse. For example, there
appears to be a consistent and common interconnecting usage of the
terms ‘Socially Responsible Investment’ and ‘Responsible Investment’.
Furthermore, there are many occasions were ‘sustainable finance’ is used,
2 THE ‘MAINSTREAMING’ OF RESPONSIBLE INVESTMENT 7

and then occasions were ‘responsible finance’ is used to describe the move-
ment we are concerned with in this book. There are a variety of reasons
for this and, for better or worse, this issue is probably emblematic of the
anchor that is holding the movement back (relatively speaking). Krosinsky
and Robins explain this neatly when they say that:

…it’s necessary to provide some guidance on the terminology used in


this book. Over the past 30 years, a range of terms, notably “social”,
“ethical”, “green”, “responsible”, “socially responsible” and “sustainable”,
have been used to describe the merging practice of incorporating extra-
financial factors within investment decision-making. One woman’s “ethical
investing” is another man’s “socially responsible investing”, and one firm’s
“responsible investing” is another manager’s “sustainable investing”. On
reflection, this embarrassment of semantic richness is perhaps understand-
able for a rapidly evolving approach, where the final form has yet to be
settled. In such a fluid field, we are all well aware of the dangers of false
precision.1

Ballestero et al. discuss how ‘SRI, also known as ethical investing, respon-
sible investing, green investing, impact investing or sustainable investing,
shares with conventional investing the top priority given to financial prof-
itability, while considering in additional social, ethical or environmental
parameters’.2 Yet, Hebb tells us that ‘responsible investing has always
had a broad mandate. Put simply, it is a long-term sustainable investment
strategy that values environmental, social, and governance factors in the
public equities portfolios of investors concerned with the long term risks
that ESG considerations may pose’.3 One includes the ‘S’ of ‘socially’,
whilst one drops it; but is this important? Cullis et al. state that:

The terms ethical and socially responsible (and, more commonly nowadays,
sustainable) are labels regularly attached to a range of enterprises; it is
important to ask what these terms mean (besides indicating that the activity
is generally a good thing). Social Responsibility is the favoured term… there
more troublesome label of ethical having been dropped. But could this
legitimisation of SRI as part of “third way” politics lead to a watering down
of the ethical brew? CSR has formed a broad agenda where businesses are
asked to improve their social, environmental, and local economic impact
and consider how businesses affect society at large in terms of human
rights, social cohesion, fair trade, and corruption. If anything, the notion
of sustainability is even more vague and ell-embracing.4
8 D. CASH

The authors continue by stating that ‘it seems that the popularity of what
we might now best refer to as SRI (the internationally most favoured
label) is set to continue to rise, given its increased visibility to institu-
tional investors and because around 70 percent of individual investors
feel they ought to be investing ethically even if they are not doing so at
present’.5 It is tempting to agree with them, that SRI is the most favoured
label, but there is no definitive evidence for this. Actually, I would argue
that Responsible Investment is the most agreed-upon term, solely because
of the popularity and the acceptance of the PRI, otherwise known as
the Principles for Responsible Investment, which is a UN-backed global
initiative that has over 1000 of the world’s leading investors and finan-
cial entities as partners (we shall be introduced to the PRI in much more
detail shortly). Yet, as ever, there are major issues with these definitions
so far. One is that the PRI, in spite of their primacy, have been criticised
for being a ‘misleading indicator’ because ‘the reality is that PRI signa-
tories commit only to behaving in accordance with a set of principles for
responsible investment, a commitment that falls well short of integrating
ESG considerations into all of their investment decisions’.6 The second
issue is an issue I have with the focus of the definitions of socially respon-
sible investment, or responsible investment, is that it is merely focused
on the actions of the investor. Whilst it is absolutely understandable that
the investor has been identified as being the lynchpin in the develop-
ment of the movement (which I agree with), the definition does not take
into account, directly, the role of those investors invest in. Perhaps I am
splitting hairs and that, in reality, the act of the investor taking a ‘respon-
sible approach’ to their investing, i.e. considering more than just financial
performance, and/or a longer time-horizon, has the effect of forcing the
issuer to alter their processes as well. I digress. Potentially, on that basis, it
may be more appropriate to talk of ‘sustainable finance’ because, as Miles
describes:

Although there is no comprehensive definition, the concept of sustainable


finance encompasses the lending and investment activities of private equity
financiers and institutional investors, as well as entities from the public
sector such as the World Bank and multilateral development banks. At its
broadest, sustainable finance refers to the “mainstreaming of environmental
and socio-economic criteria into lending, investment and other financial
services”. The NGO community tends to interpret it as requiring more
2 THE ‘MAINSTREAMING’ OF RESPONSIBLE INVESTMENT 9

innate changes in approach, such as deep-rooted commitment to social and


environmental responsibility, transparency, accountability, and precaution.7

Rather than complicate the issue any further, it may be best to focus on
the broader objective of the movement, whether funnelled through the
investor or not, and Robins gives us a clear definition upon which we can
build when he says that ‘part of the essence of contemporary sustainable
investing is the realisation that investors need to understand, measure,
and promote superior financial and non-financial performance’.8
Just a moment ago, we saw the criticism of the PRI in that it does
not force its signatories to integrate a concept known as ‘ESG’ more into
their financial processes, but what does that all mean? ‘ESG’ stands for
environment, social, and governance and relates to aspects that should
be considered when decided on, say, investment opportunities. Examples
may include the impact a business has upon the climate (for the ‘E’),
the business’ position with regard to modern slavery, or its record on
employee-related issues (for the ‘S’), or the strength and consistency of
its Board and internal management structure (for the ‘G’). However, we
can see an issue in my describing of ‘ESG’, because for the ‘S’ I mentioned
the imagined business’ approach to modern slavery; what if there are
(and there predominantly are in the developed world) strict regulations
governing the exploitation of people? Abiding by those rules, and making
sure the company proactively and efficiently declares such adherence, may
fall under the ‘G’overnance aspect too. The variety and multiplicity of the
world and everything in it mean that ESG, as a concept, is a really good
starting point but, in reality, it needs to be contextualised and understood
on a variety of levels, all the time.
Nevertheless, even if that definitional complexity is somehow resolved,
how the concept of ESG came to be, and how it is applied, simply
continues the complexity. Let us start with a simple question. So far, we
have seen many explanations and definitions of the movement of encour-
aging financial players to think about and, moreover, start to act upon
the premise that one can participate in the market and think of some-
thing else other than financial return. We have also seen that the emphasis
has been placed upon the ‘investor’. However, who is this investor? What
is their position? Understanding this means we may be able to ascertain
what they want from the interaction and, perhaps more crucially, what
they can do. To deviate for one moment, in the wake of the Wall Street
Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression, the focus was on
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