Credit Ratings

Hoping to buy his first home this year, Ralph Bustamante paid off his credit cards and cleared dings on his credit report to ensure that he'd be able to get a loan. Bustamante had hoped to pull his FICO scores, used by most lenders as a standard of creditworthiness, from the three major credit bureaus so he could negotiate the best possible mortgage rate. Make that two credit bureaus. One of the companies, Experian Group Ltd., will stop selling FICO scores to individual consumers Saturday.

Moody's Investors Service raised the credit rating of Ford Motor Co. to an investment grade, giving its seal of approval to a corporate turnaround of the business that started with heavy borrowing at the end of 2006. The move Tuesday returns control of the automaker's famous "Blue Oval" logo back to Ford. The logo, with the Ford name written in distinctive script, was first seen on a Model A in 1928 and was pledged as collateral to obtain the loans. Moody's raised its assessment of the creditworthiness of Ford's automotive operations to Baa3, up from Ba2. Ford Motor Credit Co., the automaker's finance arm, now has a rating of Baa3, up from Ba1. The investment rating is an important measure of corporate health and will reduce the automaker's borrowing expenses.

Ryland Group Inc.'s credit ratings were cut to junk by Standard & Poor's, which said the move reflected "very weak housing conditions" and the Calabasas home builder's limited liquidity.

Fitch Ratings likes what it currently sees in Ford Motor Co., upgrading the automaker's credit rating Tuesday to investment grade from its long-held junk status. Determining the Dearborn, Mich., giant to now have “sufficient financial flexibility,” the ratings agency boosted Ford's rating to BBB-minus from BB-plus. Fitch said it “believes that the work that has been accomplished has put the company in a solid position to withstand the significant cyclical and secular pressures faced by the global auto industry.” Ford, now the second-largest automaker in the U.S., maneuvered itself out of a near-collapse in 2006.

Standard & Poor's announced plans Friday to revamp its credit-rating process, as the New York-based agency and its rivals respond to criticism that they were too slow last fall to downgrade energy trader Enron Corp., which filed for bankruptcy in December. "Many of these changes have been underway since last fall, including publishing commentary more frequently so that the markets hear from us after routine events such as earnings calls and management changes," said Clifford Griep, S&P's chief credit officer.

Refinancing today is not the same game it was a few years ago, when homeowners with even a modest amount of equity and just so-so credit could score a great loan. You now need good credit, lots of equity and very little outside debt. "These are very traditional lending standards, but they're going to come as a shock to anybody who has only been in the market for the past 10 years," said Keith Gumbinger, vice president of HSH Associates, a Pompton Plains, N.J., publisher of loan information.

In a nationwide crackdown on credit repair companies, the Federal Trade Commission said Thursday that 30 firms were being targeted, including a Woodland Hills company that had its assets frozen. Success Credit Services was accused in an FTC civil suit of violating the Credit Repair Organizations Act by contending that it could quickly clean up credit reports by removing legitimate negative items, such as late payments, bankruptcies and tax liens.

TRW Inc. will begin next week its long-awaited program to provide consumers with a free copy of their credit report, upon request. "We're encouraging consumers to take advantage of it when it will benefit them the most--prior to a major purchase," TRW spokeswoman Susan Murdy said. "It will help consumers understand our role in the credit-granting process." TRW announced in October that it will become the first of the nation's three major credit bureaus to offer free reports.

Standard & Poor's is set to downgrade the credit ratings of France and other Eurozone countries, France's finance minister confirmed Friday. France, which is Europe's second-largest economy behind Germany, will be lowered one notch to AA-plus from its previous stellar AAA rating. France will then have the same credit rating as the U.S., which was downgraded by S&P in August . Standard & Poor's plan, announced late Friday afternoon on French television by the nation's finance minister, Francois Baroin, was somewhat expected since S&P warned in December that it might cut the ratings.

Standard & Poor's said its long-term ratings for nearly all countries in the Eurozone, including economic powerhouse Germany, were at risk of downgrade because of the ongoing debt crisis. The ratings company said Monday that it put the sovereign debt of 15 nations on a negative credit watch because "systemic stresses" have risen to the point that they are putting "downward pressure" on the region as a whole. Among the reasons were tightening credit, continued disagreements among policymakers about how to handle the crisis, a "rising risk" of a recession in the region in 2012 and high levels of government and household debt.

Los Angeles energy consultant Frederick H. Pickel was nominated Tuesday as the first ratepayer advocate to oversee proposed customer rate hikes at the city's Department of Water and Power. In a letter obtained by The Times, sent hours before a search panel was scheduled to announce its choice for the voter-created position, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa informed Pickel that city officials must "move quickly" on proposed increases. "Already the credit agencies have spoken about the department's need for increased revenue," Villaraigosa said in his letter.

Standard & Poor's stripped France of its coveted AAA credit rating and downgraded eight other Eurozone countries in a sign the continent's debt crisis has a way to go before being resolved. The action, announced after U.S. markets closed Friday, was somewhat expected since S&P warned in December that it might slash the ratings. Investors already had priced in the downgrades, for the most part — major global stock indexes suffered only moderate declines, and French bond yields went largely unaffected.

Standard & Poor's said its long-term ratings for nearly all countries in the Eurozone, including economic powerhouse Germany, were at risk of downgrade because of the ongoing debt crisis. The ratings company said Monday that it put the sovereign debt of 15 nations on a negative credit watch because "systemic stresses" have risen to the point that they are putting "downward pressure" on the region as a whole. Among the reasons were tightening credit, continued disagreements among policymakers about how to handle the crisis, a "rising risk" of a recession in the region in 2012 and high levels of government and household debt.

Standard & Poor's is expected to announce later on Monday that it may downgrade the credit ratings of all 17 euro zone countries, two EU officials told Reuters. The sources confirmed earlier reports that said S&P was preparing to place all the euro-zone countries --including those with top-tier AAA-ratings such as Germany and France -- on credit watch negative, which normally means a chance of downgrade within three months. A spokesman for S&P said the agency had no comment.

With their stock prices struggling despite strong profit growth, more big-name companies are trying to set an example for investors: They're channeling cash into buybacks of their own shares. That strategy lit a fire under the stock of Thousand Oaks biotech giant Amgen Inc. on Monday, after the company launched a plan to buy back up to $5 billion of its shares — about 10% of the total outstanding — over the next month. Amgen shares jumped $3.26, or 5.9%, to $58.43 in the biggest one-day gain in 17 months.

Jefferies, responding to its plunging shares and growing fear over its stability, said it had no meaningful net exposure to European sovereign debt and that it was, in fact, positioned to profit should credit quality there deteriorate further. The statement Thursday, meant to clarify the U.S. investment bank's trading positions and rebut an analyst downgrade this week, comes days after broker-dealer MF Global Holdings filed for bankruptcy after big bets on European sovereign debt went wrong.

Establishing good credit is a key step for a small business, and not just because it paves the way to getting loans at good rates. High credit scores can also lead to better payment terms from vendors. And it can mean more sales, because business customers sometimes check the credit rating of a new firm before trusting it with their orders. "Your cost of doing business will go down and your cost of growing will go down," said John Schafer, a partner in the Newport Beach law firm of Manderson, Schafer & McKinlay.

California's credit rating, already the lowest of the 50 states, may be cut again, Standard & Poor's warned Tuesday. As the debate over budget cuts drags on in Sacramento, S&P put its "A" grade on the state's $59 billion in general obligation bonds on "negative credit watch," meaning the rating is at risk of a downgrade.

Ford Motor Co. is knocking on the door of an investment-grade corporate credit rating, which would help slice the automaker's borrowing costs. Standard & Poor's Ratings Services raised its corporate credit rating on Ford Motor Co. and Ford Motor Credit Co., the automaker's lending arm, to BB+ from BB-. That puts the company just one notch below an investment-grade rating, which is an important measure of corporate health and would reduce the automaker's...