Sebi has miserably failed in looking at rating agencies over IL&FS: Anil Singhvi
You have raised a very important issue and we must learn from IL&FS episode that Sebi has miserably failed in looking at
rating agencies. In fact, if you look at IL&FS, the problem is it has been run like a fiefdom of one man for the last 30 years.
I do not think the board’s oversight was enough in case of IL&FS though the board comprised many serving and retired officers at various points in time, including the larger shareholder, that is LIC. LIC has been a nominee on the board of IL&FS for a long time.
Having said this,
I think the rating agencies have miserably failed in looking at the health of IL&FS. It was like an Amtek Auto, all of a sudden you have a double AA, AAA company getting down to D and this is what rating agencies are doing. There has been really no oversight on the rating agencies.
About the whole methodology and the teams
which are really giving these kinds of ratings, how could an AAA become D overnight on that. That means there is something more wrong in this.
I think IL&FS should be a good example and an eye opener for all the regulatory framework in India. It is not a small deal. It is about Rs 1 lakh crore, I do not have any iota of doubt in my mind that most mutual funds and other lenders to IL&FS failed miserably in having a credit assessment.
You just cannot go by the AAA rating and rely on that. Ultimately, you were giving the money to IL&FS which has turned from a financing company into an infrastructure play. Would you have given this kind of money to any other infrastructure company? Answer is no. So you were relying largely on account of the shoddy job by the rating agencies and rating agencies have failed in last two years in many cases on that.
So I do not have any sympathy for all the mutual funds which invested in the IL&FS paper. Why should government and public money be there to bail out the problems of the mutual fund industry on account of their having invested with IL&FS? I for one surely would recommend not to get into that. If mutual funds have an exposure, so be it.
Read more at:
//economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/66050746.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst