Egan-Jones Defends Credit Rating Business as SEC Weighs Charges

Egan-Jones Ratings Co. didn’t knowingly make misrepresentations when applying to become a nationally recognized credit-rating firm, its founder said.

“The material that we put down was accurate to the best of our ability,” Sean Egan, president of the Haverford, Pennsylvania-based company, said today in an interview on CNBC. “If we had to do it again today I’d say exactly the same thing.”

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was poised to vote today on whether to charge Egan-Jones with intentionally making misstatements on its application to become a so-called nationally recognized statistical rating organization, Reuters reported earlier today citing unidentified people.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lisa Abramowicz in New York at labramowicz@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alan Goldstein at agoldstein5@bloomberg.net