By John Geddie
LONDON, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Ratings firm DBRS plans to cover
19 more countries over the next two to three years, challenging
the dominance of the big three agencies Standard & Poor's,
Moody's and Fitch.
The Canadian firm's head of sovereign ratings told Reuters
on Wednesday that it would add the European Union and G20
countries it does not already cover, expanding its list of 37
sovereigns and supranational borrowers by more than 50 percent.
The countries to be added are Luxembourg, Slovenia,
Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, the Czech
Republic, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia in the EU, plus
Indonesia, South Korea, South Africa, Russia, Saudi Arabia,
Singapore and Hong Kong.
DBRS will hire more staff in New York and London as part of
the growth plan that is also aimed at allowing the firm to build
up their core business in structured finance.
"It is a bit like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with only
some of the pieces," said Fergus McCormick (N:MKC), head of sovereign
ratings at DBRS.
"First of all we want to deepen our analysis and fill in the
gaps, but we are also finding that investors increasingly
differentiate between emerging markets."
As recently as 2006, DBRS only rated Canada. The big three
agencies all rate more than 100 sovereigns.
(Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)