Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, and Mervyn A. King, the governor of the Bank of England, separately questioned the role of rating agencies after Standard Poor’s cut its ratings Friday on nine European countries, including France and Italy.
One should “put less focus directly on what the ratings agencies say and more on what the market as a whole is saying in terms of sovereign debt,” Mr. King told a parliamentary committee Tuesday in London. “What we need to do is to move to a point, and I think markets have gone some way towards that, where they pay less attention to the verdicts of the ratings agencies.”
Mr. Draghi told the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Monday that “we should learn to do without ratings, or at least we should learn to assess creditworthiness.”
He added, “Certainly one needs to ask how important are these ratings for the marketplace over all, for investors.”
Ratings agencies have attracted criticism from politicians for specific downgrades, but the comments from the two central bankers questioned the wider role of the agencies.
The three big rating agencies — S.P., Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings — have repeatedly lowered their ratings for the sovereign debt of European economies over the past year, saying some austerity measures were not far-reaching enough to deal with high debt levels. The downgrades have made it more difficult for governments to raise money cheaply and heightened concerns about the ability of some countries to finance their debts.
Martin Winn, a spokesperson for Standard Poor’s, said the agency was “focused on fulfilling our role to investors by providing an independent view of creditworthiness — one based on rigorous analysis and our transparent and consistently applied criteria. We would also point out that our sovereign ratings have an excellent track record as indicators of default risk.”
A Moody’s representative said, “The fundamental concern over the role of credit rating agencies stems from their use in regulation, and Moody’s has long supported removing the mechanical reliance on ratings in regulation.”
A spokesman for Fitch, Daniel Noonan, wrote by e-mail that credit ratings “should be considered among numerous inputs when making investment decisions.” He added that Fitch “broadly supports efforts to reduce overreliance on ratings.”
In a sign that investors are already starting to pay less attention to rating agencies, Spain’s borrowing costs fell during an auction Tuesday even after Standard Poor’s cut the country’s debt rating by two levels on Friday. Greece also sold Treasury bills on Tuesday with a yield that was lower than at an auction in December.
Stock markets on Monday had shown a muted reaction to the downgrades, which were widely anticipated, and to a separate warning by Moody’s that France’s debt outlook was putting pressure on its credit rating.
Standard Poor’s on Monday also cut the top credit rating of the European Financial Stability Facility, the euro zone’s bailout fund, which sold €1.5 billion, or $1.9 billion, of six-month bills Tuesday.
The German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, told a German radio station on Monday that he did not think “that S.P. really has understood what we have already gotten under way in Europe.”
The European Commission said Monday that Standard Poor’s recent downgrades of European economies ignored the progress that the countries had already made by reducing debt and implementing cost-saving measures.
Mr. King also sent a warning Tuesday to British banking executives not to accept excessive bonuses. “The reputation of those institutions will be affected if their senior executives reward themselves,” he said. “Particularly in a period when the banks, in terms of their share prices, have hardly been stellar.”
Josef Ackermann, the chief executive of Deutsche Bank, lamented Tuesday what he said was the erosion of confidence in the solidity of the euro, the European Union and even the principles of Western democracy.
“Not only followers of the Occupy movement have been asking questions about the business models of banks and the purpose of certain financial product,” Mr. Ackermann told a business audience in Frankfurt. “It is also investors, customers and representatives of the entire political spectrum.”
“Doubts expressed publicly by politicians have deeply shaken belief in the permanence of the currency union,” he said.
“The government debt crisis has amplified the loss of credibility and legitimacy of the market economy,” he added, adopting an unusually pessimistic tone four months before he is to retire. “The belief in the superiority of the West and of democracy has been thrown into question.”
Jack Ewing contributed reporting from Frankfurt.
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