This post is different to the other posts of the Financial Regulation Matters Blog, as it represents a preview of an article that has been accepted for publication. Therefore, the following post will be, at most, merely illustrative. The article is concerned with concluding an analysis of the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DoJ) investigation into the actions of Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, the two largest credit rating agencies. In February 2015 the DoJ agreed a settlement package with S&P for a record $1.375 billion, with S&P settling with private institutions on the same day (like CalPERS for £135 million); the analysis on that can be found here (a pre-published version of an article in print). However, the scale of the investigation meant that the two massive agencies were to be investigated separately, and upon settling with S&P the DoJ immediately switched its sights to Moody’s. This new article, which can be found here in pre-published form, therefore looks ...