Standard Poors Corp

The last of the nation's top financial credit agencies took action Tuesday to lower Los Angeles' bond rating, which will likely cost the city millions of dollars more when it borrows in the future. City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana said the Standard & Poor's downgrade stemmed from concerns about the significant drop in tax revenues that city officials have seen and their plan to draw on reserves to end the year in the black. Standard & Poor's acknowledged that officials had taken some steps to close the budget gap, city analysts said -- including last week's authorization to eliminate 4,000 city workers to save as much as $300 million next fiscal year.

Stocks rose to new records Friday as a strong employment report fed investors' enthusiasm and capped a week of extraordinary strength on Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 72.82 points to close at 11,139.24, topping its previous record close of 11,107.19, set May 13. Bond yields held steady despite the employment news, providing support for stocks.

One measure of the collapse of shares of banks and other financial companies is the sector's shrinking importance in the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index. At the stock market's all-time high of Oct. 9, 2007, financial stocks accounted for 20.1% of the market value of the S&P -- the largest share of any of the index's 10 major industry sectors. From the stock market's perspective, finance then was the most important business in America.

Goldman Sachs & Co. chief investment strategist Abby Joseph Cohen raised her forecast for the Standard & Poor's 500 index Wednesday, predicting that it will rise 3% by the end of the year as U.S. corporate profits grow faster than analysts had expected.

Rating company Standard & Poor's on Tuesday said it expected General Motors Corp. to swing to profitability in 2006 but said a bankruptcy filing was a risk if financial performance at the world's largest automaker did not improve. "We think there could be some improvement in" 2006, S&P credit analyst Bob Schulz said in discussing a special report the financial information company issued on the outlook for the auto industry.

Bond rating service Standard & Poor's on Friday placed a "credit watch with negative implications" on California's credit rating ahead of the planned upcoming sale of $4 billion of short-term securities. In all, the state says it needs to borrow $7 billion -- $4 billion next week and $3 billion later -- to give it the cash to pay for routine expenses before tax revenues pick up early next year. S&P says it's not worried about California's raising enough money to pay back a loan.

After a dismal gain of just 3.7% in S&P 500 company operating earnings in the first quarter versus a year earlier, analysts' estimates for second-quarter earnings are falling. But First Call, the Boston-based earnings tracker, says analysts have trimmed their expectations for the current quarter modestly so far. Adding up thousands of individual company estimates, First Call calculates that analysts overall predict a 5.7% rise in S&P operating earnings this quarter.

California received higher ratings on as much as $28 billion of its bonds from the two leading credit-rating services, which said Thursday that the state's economic growth warranted the upgrade. Moody's Investors Service said its upgrade to "Aa2" from "Aa3" affects $22 billion of California general obligation debt, including $850 million of bonds scheduled for sale Wednesday. Moody's also raised its ratings on $6 billion of bonds supported by state leases, to "Aa3" from "A1."

Bond rating service Standard & Poor's on Friday placed a "credit watch with negative implications" on California's credit rating ahead of the planned upcoming sale of $4 billion of short-term securities. In all, the state says it needs to borrow $7 billion -- $4 billion next week and $3 billion later -- to give it the cash to pay for routine expenses before tax revenues pick up early next year. S&P says it's not worried about California's raising enough money to pay back a loan.

The city, shut out of the municipal bond market for four years because of its financial mess, is once again seen as a good credit risk by Wall Street, officials announced Thursday. The Standard & Poor's Ratings Services, which had suspended the city's credit rating in 2004, announced it has restored the rating and given the city an outlook listed as "positive" and "stable." "Today is the most significant day for residents of our city in the past four years," said Mayor Jerry Sanders.

Saying it had expected Univision Communications Inc. to gain more on the sale of its music division, ratings agency Standard & Poor's this week downgraded the corporate credit ratings of the Spanish-language media company to a B-minus from a B. Univision last week announced it had reached an agreement to sell its music division to Universal Music Group for $153 million, of which $113 million is due to Univision upon closing. That amount was "significantly lower than expected" and not enough to repay a $500-million bridge loan that matures in March 2009, S&P said.

Standard & Poor's signaled Tuesday that it was unlikely to raise California's debt rating with the state suffering an estimated $10-billion shortfall in tax revenue caused by a slowing economy. S&P changed California's credit outlook to "stable" from "positive." Since 2004, the rating firm has upgraded $48.2 billion of the state's debt to A+, the fifth-highest investment grade. The economy is being hurt by a slide in home sales that followed the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market.

Connecticut's attorney general said Friday that he had subpoenaed the nation's three largest debt-rating companies as part of an investigation into possible anti-competitive practices. Atty. Gen. Richard Blumenthal confirmed that his office issued subpoenas Oct. 10 to Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investor Services and Fitch Ratings Service.

In another sign of growing concern about mortgages made to high-risk borrowers, Standard & Poor's said it would no longer wait for homes to be foreclosed on and sold at a loss before alerting investors in mortgage-backed bonds that it expects to lower ratings on the bonds.

Synthonics Technologies, based in Westlake Village, will have a comprehensive listing in Standard & Poor's Corporation Records after being approved by the publication's editorial board. The company's listing will start with the December issue. Standard & Poor's Corporation Records, published by McGraw-Hill, is a recognized securities manual that meets the requirements for secondary trading in most states.

Juniper Networks Inc., the Sunnyvale, Calif., company that makes equipment that directs Internet traffic, will replace Albertsons Inc. in the Standard & Poor's 500 index. Managers of funds that mimic the S&P 500 are now likely to purchase Juniper's shares. S&P announced the switch after the close of regular trading. Juniper shares gained 74 cents to $15.29 during the regular session and climbed to $16.20 after hours.

Rating company Standard & Poor's on Tuesday said it expected General Motors Corp. to swing to profitability in 2006 but said a bankruptcy filing was a risk if financial performance at the world's largest automaker did not improve. "We think there could be some improvement in" 2006, S&P credit analyst Bob Schulz said in discussing a special report the financial information company issued on the outlook for the auto industry.