Too big to fail, too big to rate

“Too big to fail” is a phrase which helped to define a global financial crisis that some say still hasn’t ended and it is as pertinent now as it was in 2008.

Almost five years exactly have passed since Hank Paulson, then US Treasury Secretary, swapped the purchase of toxic assets for straight injections of capital to shore up the country's banks.

The ramifications from such a huge statement of intent continue to reverberate even now, not just within the global financial services industry but amongst the regulators that police it and the credit ratings agencies that are meant to provide an early warning system of...