Dr Daniel Cash

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Credit Ratings

What Credit Rating Agencies Actually Do

What Credit Rating Agencies Actually Do

Ask most investors what a sovereign credit rating measures and the answer arrives quickly: the probability that a government repays its debt. This description captures something true, though it leaves out most of the work. It treats credit rating agencies as instruments, dials that convert fiscal data into a letter

The Quiet Reinvention of Sovereign Creditworthiness: Why two unrelated publications reveal a broader shift in sovereign risk analysis.

The Quiet Reinvention of Sovereign Creditworthiness: Why two unrelated publications reveal a broader shift in sovereign risk analysis.

Two publications launched this summer that, combined, reveal a broader shift on how sovereign risk analysis may be developing. Moody’s issued a sector report on sovereign debt payment pause clauses, examining new proposals from the London Coalition’s Bondholder Working Group and the Center for Global Development. This came

The Missing Infrastructure of Development Finance: Aid, institutions, and the overlooked architecture of sovereign finance

The Missing Infrastructure of Development Finance: Aid, institutions, and the overlooked architecture of sovereign finance

Executive Summary The debate over UK development assistance has become dominated by a single question: how much should be spent. This essay argues that an equally important question has received far less attention: how aid should be spent if the objective is to help countries achieve more durable access to

Who Governs Development? How successive institutions came to shape the terms on which development is financed

Who Governs Development? How successive institutions came to shape the terms on which development is financed

In 2025, debt service payments exceeded public spending on education in 113 countries across the Global South, a group encompassing some 6.1 billion people (UNESCO, 2026). In sub-Saharan Africa, governments now direct on average 3.6 times more of their public resources toward creditors than toward classrooms, a

THE TWO PLANES OF JUDGEMENT: Why the African Credit Rating Agency's real test is not only methodological

THE TWO PLANES OF JUDGEMENT: Why the African Credit Rating Agency's real test is not only methodological

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The African Credit Rating Agency (AfCRA), now moving through its establishment phase under the African Union and the African Peer Review Mechanism, has been framed almost entirely around one question: are African sovereigns underrated by the Big Three. That question is an extremely important question. Nehls and Schmidt,

The Natural Oligopoly: How Investors Keep the Rating Agencies in Power

The Natural Oligopoly: How Investors Keep the Rating Agencies in Power

Earlier this month (October), Andrew Bailey stood before the House of Lords Financial Services Regulation Committee and said something striking. When asked about private credit, he recalled what industry figures had told him: everything looked fine, apart from the role of the rating agencies. Then he asked, “Well, we’re

The Ratings Oligopoly and the MDB Reform Ceiling

The Ratings Oligopoly and the MDB Reform Ceiling

On October 13, 2025, S&P Global Ratings published revised criteria for how it evaluates multilateral lending institutions. The changes were technical: adjustments to how the agency calculates risk-weighted assets, a broader recognition of what counts as usable capital, and new treatment of hybrid instruments and contingent capital