As of July 13, 2015 credit rating agencies are regulated in accordance with Federal Law No. 222-FZ, “On the activities of credit rating agencies in the Russian Federation, on the amendment of Article 76.1 of the Federal Law on the Central Bank of the Russian Federation (Bank of Russia) and the repeal of certain provisions of legal acts of the Russian Federation”.
The objective of the law is to ensure the independence of credit rating agencies and transparency of their activities as well as protecting the rights of the rated entities and users of credit ratings.
The statute defines the terms of credit rating agency, rating activity, credit rating, rated entity, the ranking object, rating category, the rating scale (including international and national), sovereign credit rating, unsolicited credit rating, credit rating forecast, rating analyst and methodology.
The Law specifies the requirements concerning the founders (shareholders, participants) of credit rating agencies in Russia to ensure the independence of their activity; the most important requirement is to limit each founder’s share to 10% and 20% for credit institutions.
Subsidiaries or branch offices of the foreign credit rating agencies are authorized to carry out certain rating activities such as assigning, confirmation, revision, recall of credit ratings and making rating forecasts on behalf of the foreign credit rating agency.
The Bank of Russia, as regulator, is required to maintain a Registry of credit rating agencies which are only authorized to perform rating activitiesThe minimal share capital requirement for the credit rating agency is set at 50 million RUB (approx. 700 000 EUR). A national rating scale is only for rating of Russian companies and the decisions of foreign authorities can’t influence decisions to withdraw their ratings (ratings of the Russian companies).
Source: Credinform Russia
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