Moody's Investors Service is looking to expand its seven-man corporate governance team it formed last year, says Ken Bertsch, director of corporate governance. He declined to say how many new hires the rating agency plans to add. Moody's recently started publishing corporate governance assessments on select debt issuers in the U.S. and Canada.
The assessments look into how board practices affect the credit quality of companies and help investors assess credit risks of issuers, Bertsch says. Moody's aims to publish evaluations on 100 debt issuers by the end of the year and cover a total of at least 300 issuers in 2004, he adds.