CEO Series: Fitch Ratings CEO Paul Taylor
About Paul Taylor
In a 2017 video series for the Museum of American Finance, Paul Taylor described the bond market as "the largest and most important of the global financial markets" and stated that credit ratings "play an important role in ensuring efficient markets." He explained that Fitch Ratings' credit ratings are "opinions about what we think will happen in the future" and that they "help bridge the information gap between buyer and seller." Taylor emphasized that Fitch is "committed to being independent and objective" and aims to be "as vocal as we can be about the risks we see." In a 2012 interview at the St. Gallen Symposium, Taylor said that rating agencies are "one way of assessing risk" and that their power is "overstated by much of the media and also by maybe some of the political classes." He stated that Fitch assesses only credit risk and that other forms of analysis should complement credit ratings. Regarding the idea of a European rating agency, Taylor said he was "not really sure what's meant by a European rating agency" and noted that if being European meant "simply giving higher ratings to European companies, then that's not a good business model."