Relatives Are Relative

The scandal with the Greensill Bank brings back earlier scandals by the same rating agency to mind.

How close can relationships be without being a problem for the rating and for the rating agency? What degree of kinship could influence the independence of judgment?

The story of the fund initiator Interlife Management GmbH seems like a penny dreadful: The company belonged to the father of the business scheme initiator and major shareholder of today’s Scope SE & Co. KGaA. Scope not only gave the first Interlife fund a good rating: A company owned by Scope manager Martin Passenheim took over sales. Ratings with a bitter aftertaste are not a recent phenomenon, but part of the gene code of this rating agency.