According to the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, president of S&P (since 2007) Deven Sharma will resign. He will work until the end of the year as a consultant on a strategic review of portfolio for McGraw-Hill, S&P’s main shareholder. Current Citibank COO Douglas Peterson will replace him starting September 12. "S&P will keep producing comparable, objective and transparent ratings," said McGraw-Hill in a statement.
Standard & Poor’s decision in August 5, to lower the US rating from their top AAA caused a panic in the markets and major stock exchanges’ equity indices plummeted worldwide. Neither Fitch nor Moody’s followed this move that has been criticized by the U.S. Treasury. The Obama administration reported an error of 2 000 billion dollars due to an approximation in the methodology used by S&P in its calculations.
In addition, S&P has now to face the Justice Department which opened an investigation on how the agency had assigned high ratings to subprime securities before the financial turmoil in 2008.
However, some people familiar with the matter claim that Sharma’s departure was planned long before the US’ downgrades by S & P on the 5th of August
