Abstract:
At the present, Credit Rating Agency (CRA) carries out an important role in the Financial Market by assessing the risk of debt securities and declaring the result of the risk assessment to the investors and then the investors will use the result of such risk assessment as supporting information for their investment. Moreover, the investors relies on the debt securities rating rated by CRA due to nowadays there are so many types of debt securities and the investors do not have knowledge and capability enough to assess the risk by themselves. Provided that the rating rated by CRA is a fault rating, the investors will suffer from damages incurred by such fault rating and such damages may effect the economics of the country as well. This research by comparison between the law of United State of America, Australia, Singapore and Thailand revealed that the existing laws and regulations are not suitable enough to regulate the operation of CRAs business and to protect the investors in the Financial Market due to 1) regulations issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission are not enough to regulate the operation of CRA because lack of the material regulation, i.e. conflict of interest and prohibited actions of CRA, in order to ensure that all rating are transparent and accurate; and 2) Tort law in the Civil and Commercial Code is not enough to protect the investors suffering from a false rating asserted by CRA because the burden of proof in respect of intention or negligence of CRA and the damages arising from the false rating are on the investors. The recommendations are that the operation of CRA should be more regulated and the liability of CRA and remedy of the investors suffering from the damage incurred by the fault rating rated by CRA should be specified in the laws. Therefore, 1) more regulations to supervise the operation of CRA, 2) the laws which specifies the liability of CRA as a strict liability in order to transfer the burden of proof from the investors to CRA and 3) measure clearly specifies the remedy of the investors should be drafted and enacted.