Moody's

Moody's Overview: Moody’s Corporation is a publicly-traded company headquartered in New York. Its subsidiaries are:

• Moody’s Investors Service
• Moody’s KMV (credit analysis tools)
• Moody’s Economy.com (economic research and data)
• Moody’s Wall Street Analytics (structured finance software and analysis)

The main lines of business in the principal subsidiary, Moody’s Investors Service, are:

• Credit Ratings
• Investment Research
• Risk Analysis
• Financial Data and Information

Size: Moody’s reports these figures as of June, 2008:

• Employees = 3,500
• Analysts = 1,000
• Offices in 29 countries
• Offices in the U.S. = 6
• Tracks debt of over 100 nations
• Tracks debt of over 12,000 corporate issuers
• Tracks debt of over 29,000 public finance issuers
• Tracks over 96,000 structured finance obligations

Positives: Moody’s focuses solely on rating debt issues, with a particular expertise in municipal bonds. People interested in the latter field might find Moody’s to be their employer of choice

Negatives: See the rating agencies overview.