4.9

Einhorn, head of Greenlight Capital, was the headliner, because he caused a big stir at last year's conference when he detailed his bearishness on Lehman Brothers based on the overvaluation of real-estate assets. That bearishness turned out to be right on the money. Einhorn said he's bearish now on Moody 's (MCO) because the credit-ratings agency has a "shattered brand," and because even the firm's largest holder, Warren Buffett, doesn't rely on credit ratings.

What the Fed? Moody's: Debra Borchardt comes to the defense of Moody's.

Click here to watch the video.

Warren Buffet owns 19% or 48,000,000 shares

The investment in the Baltimore-based asset manager reflects a significant rebalancing out of the fund's profitable energy exposure -- which had peaked at 15% early this year, and included FMC Technologies (FTI), Noble (NE), and Smith International (SII) -- into financials. Since the spring, Sloan also has added People's United Financia l (PBCT), Moody's Investor Service (MCO) and Progressive (PGR) as part of boosting his weighting in financials from 5% to 15%.

Underperform - Price 38.62 on Sept. 15
by Jefferies & Co.

Target: 32. Moody's says it has agreed to acquire {risk software maker] Fermat International for $189 million....Moody's currently trades at 10.5 times and 19.4 times our 2008 Ebitda [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization] and EPS estimates, respectively. We are lowering 4Q08 and full-year 2008 EPS to 45 cents and $1.90, respectively. Market cap: $9.6 billion.

Moody's (MCO) was upgraded from Hold to Buy, Citigroup said. $51 price target. Company posted solid fourth quarter results, and has good earnings visibility for 2008.

Macke retired Circuit City (CC) and filled the vacancy with Moody's.

7.8

Moody's Investors Sue Over Subprime
Roger Kirby, head of class action litigation at Kirby McInerney, discusses the firm's lawsuit against Moody's for its role in the subprime crisis.

Click here to watch the video.

Lost money on this one

conflict of interest

poor peformance

From Barron's 3-26-07

"A secondary way we've found to play the demise of subprime and its fallout is by shorting the credit-rating agencies... Subprime issuance is going to shrink dramatically this year, and a big chunk of CDO volume is backed by subprime assets, and so the rating agencies' entire structured-finance operations should see a big drop in growth this year, especially in their high-margin areas, and that's underappreciated by the stock market. In light of the fact that Moody's is trading at 25 times estimates of 14% earnings growth and McGraw-Hill is trading at 22 times estimates of 16% earnings growth, and we see both missing their estimates this year and possibly showing little if any earnings growth, those multiples could get hurt badly."