The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday released an annual report on credit rating agency decisions, raising concerns about disclosure and a failure to downgrade a security in a timely way. The SEC did not identify which rating firms were cited for issues. However, the report said one of the larger raters delayed downgrading a number of structured finance transactions to give the rated companies or other relevant parties "the opportunity to avoid downgrades by restructuring their transactions." The report raised concerns about how the methodology applied to rating certain securities was changed but not publicly disclosed for several months. It added that some credit rating methodologies were published and disclosed "inconsistently" and "in a less-than-transparent manner." The big three credit-rating agencies are Moody's Corp. , Standard & Poor's, a McGraw-Hill Cos. subsidiary; and Fitch Ratings.

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