PROFILES OF THE THREE LEADING RATING AGENCIE

PROFILES OF THE THREE LEADING RATING AGENCIES

The three leading rating agencies are Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investor Service and Fitch Ratings. All three firms evaluate new issues, monitor outstanding issues and publish related reports. Each agency has its own ratings definition. In addition to municipal debt, all three agencies also rate international, corporate and other kinds of debt.

Standard & Poor's
1221 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
212-512-2000
www.standardandpoors.com

Standard & Poor's is the financial services segment of the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Chairman and CEO of McGraw-Hill Companies: Harold McGraw III
President of Standard & Poor's: Kathleen A. Corbet

2003 Operating Revenues for McGraw-Hill Companies: $4.8 billion
2003 Operating Revenues for Financial Services: $1.7 billion
2003 Operating Profits for McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc: $1.1 billion
2003 Operating Profits for Financial Services: $667 million
2003 Net Income for McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc: $687 million

Total McGraw-Hill employees: 16,068

Business Description

Standard & Poor's is the one of the world's leading providers of credit ratings, indexes, risk evaluation investment research and valuations. The McGraw-Hill Companies' Financial Services segment operates under the Standard & Poor's brand as one reporting unit. The McGraw Hill's 2003 10-K states that it has the world's largest network of credit ratings professionals.

Standard & Poor's ratings operate in four areas:

Corporate and Government Ratings (includes Public Finance)
Structured Finance Ratings
Securities Services
Risk Solutions

History
In 1860 Henry Varnum Poor published The History of Railroads and Canals of the United States, one of the first publications of Poor's Publishing Company. The company also published financial information for investors. According to the company's website, the fundamental tenet of Poor's reference publications was the "investor's right to know."

In 1916, the Standard Statistics Bureau, which had been formed in 1906 to provide financial information on U.S. companies, began to rate corporate bonds. Municipal bond ratings were introduced in 1940.

Poor's Publishing Company and Standard Statistics Bureau merged in 1941 to form Standard & Poor's Corporation. In 1966, the McGraw-Hill Companies bought Standard & Poor's. The McGraw-Hill Book Company was formed by the merger of the book departments of the McGraw Publishing Company and the Hill Publishing Company in 1909. The McGraw Publishing Company was founded by James McGraw in 1899 and the Hill Publishing Company was founded by John Hill in 1902.
Moody's Corporation
99 Church Street
New York, NY 10007
212-533-0300
www.moodys.com

Chairman and CEO: John Rutherford. Jr.

2003 Revenues: $1.2 billion
2003 Net Income: $ 363.0 million
Total Employees: 2,300

Business Description
Moody's provides credit ratings, research and analysis of debt instruments and securities in the global capital market. The company also provides credit assessment services, credit training services and credit software to financial institutions. Moody's has offices in 19 countries.

The company has two business segments: Moody's Investor Service and Moody's KMV.

Moody's Investor Service provides credit ratings, research and risk analysis of a wide range of securities issued in the domestic and international markets. The company's ratings and credit research on governmental and commercial entities cover approximately 100 countries. Moody's Investor Service dominates the overall results of Moody's. For example, revenues from Moody's Investor Service in 2003 were $1.1 billion, while total revenues for the company were $1.2 billion.

Moody's Investor Service has four ratings groups:

Structured Finance
Corporate Finance
Financial Institutions and Sovereign Risks
Public Finance

The company started its debt analysis business in 1918. It covers ratings for an estimated 68,000 debt instruments on 22,500 municipal issuers. These include the general obligation debts of governments, revenue bonds, and other municipal instrument. The company claims that virtually all rated U.S. municipal bonds and short-term instruments issued annually are covered by it.

Moody's KMV provides credit risk management products and credit training to financial institutions.
History
John Moody & Company was founded by John Moody in 1900. That same year the company published Moody's Manual of Industrial and Miscellaneous Securities, which provided information and statistics on stock and bonds issued by financial institutions and government agencies, as well as on manufacturing, mining, utilities and food companies.

Lack of capital during the 1907 stock market crash forced John Moody to close his company, but he reemerged in 1909 with a new idea. Instead of providing straightforward financial and management data on companies, he began to analyze securities. His first project was a book that analyzed the railroads and their outstanding securities and provided opinions about their relative investment quality. The opinions or conclusions used letter rating symbols that had been used by credit reporting firms since the late 1800s.

After the 1909 publication of Moody's Analysis of Railroad Investments, the company expanded its base by evaluating the operations, management and finances of industrial companies and utilities. In 1914, the company incorporated as Moody's Investor Service and also expanded ratings coverage to bonds issued by U.S. cities and other municipalities.

In the 1970s the company began to cover the commercial paper market and bank deposits. The company also started to charge issuers and investors for rating services. The company justified the fees on the grounds that subscription fees were not adequate to meet staffing expenses at higher levels of compensation that was needed to meet the demands of increasingly complex capital markets. The company became a part of The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation (D&B) in 1962 and operated as part of D&B until September 30, 2000, when the Board of Directors approved a plan to split the company into two separately publicly traded companies. The ratings, related research and credit risk management business of the company was renamed as Moody's Corporation.

Fitch Ratings
One State Street Plaza
New York, NY 10004
212-908-0500
www.fitchratings.com

President and CEO: Stephen W. Joynt

Chairman - Marc Ladreit de Lacharriere

Eldon House
2 Eldon Street
London EC2M7UA

Group Managing Director: Paul Taylor

Total employees: 1,200
2002 Sales: $396.2 million
2002 net income: $41.6 million


Business Description

Fitch is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fimalac, S.A., based in Paris, France. Fimalac is a business-to-business services specialist. Its three core businesses are: ratings, hand tools and chemical storage.

Fitch has headquarters in New York and London and covers institutions/issuers in more than 80 countries. It has offices in 35 countries, in addition to its offices in the U.S and in the United Kingdom. It is the third largest rating agency in the world.

The company's website includes the following areas of work under Public Finance:

U.S. Public Finance
International Public Finance
Sovereigns (Governments and Nations)
Supranationals (e.g. the multilateral development banks)

The U.S. Public Finance Group analyzes and prepares ratings reports in different areas of the tax-exempt bond market. It also rates the debt of state and local governments and their authorities and the taxable debt of non-profit institutions.

History

The company was founded in 1913 in the Financial District of New York City by John Knowles Fitch. Originally called the Fitch Publishing Company, it published financial statistics for the investment community. In 1924, John Fitch introduced the Fitch ratings system for analyzing financial securities.

In 1997, it merged with IBCA Limited, a London-based company that was owned by Fimalac S.A. By 2000, Fitch acquired Duff & Phelps Credit Rating Company and the rating business of Thomson BankWatch.