A view shows the Standard & Poor's building in New York's financial district Feb. 5, 2013.Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Standard & Poor's may complete as early as Monday a $1.38-billion (U.S.) accord with the U.S. and 19 states over claims it inflated subprime mortgage-bond ratings before the financial crisis, a person familiar with the talks said.
The ratings company deepened the 2008 economic collapse by giving top ratings to bad mortgage debt to win business from Wall Street banks, the government said. The U.S. said it might seek as much as $5-billion when it sued S&P in 2013. The states and the District of Columbia also sued the McGraw Hill Financial Inc. unit.
The Justice Department has secured settlements worth tens of billions of dollars during the past two years from mortgage lenders and banks it blamed for the financial crisis. Those companies generated unprecedented amounts of shoddy mortgages packaged and sold to investors as securities, many of which turned out to be worthless despite investment-grade ratings.
New York-based S&P, the only credit rater sued by the Justice Department's residential mortgage-backed securities working group, contends it was singled out because it downgraded U.S. debt in 2011. Its competitors, which issued the same grades for the same securities, weren't sued by the U.S. The case is scheduled for trial in September.
Representatives of S&P and the Justice Department didn't immediately respond to calls seeking comment on the possible settlement. The person familiar with talks didn't want to be identified because the negotiations are private. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that the accord may come as early as Thursday.
S&P Conflicts
The U.S. accused S&P of lying about its ratings' being free of conflicts of interest. The government has said it might seek as much as $5 billion in civil penalties for losses by federally insured financial institutions that relied on the company's investment-grade ratings for mortgage-backed securities and collateralized-debt obligations.
The case is U.S. v. McGraw-Hill Cos., 13-cv-00779, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Santa Ana).