This is partly balanced by the fact that securing a rating is meaningless if investors don't trust it.

Along the way such abuses led to the rise of J. P. Morgan, whose early power came from the fact that English investors trusted him.

First, investors do not necessarily trust executives to use a company's profit wisely, especially when promising investments are hard to find.

If investors cannot trust the auditors, they cannot trust the financial data on which billions of transactions are based each day.

The upshot of these successful decisions is that investors trust Mr. Greenspan.

The services of an accounting firm are of no use to a company if investors will not trust the auditor's report.

Last summer stocks were slumping, not just over fears about the economy but because of concerns that ordinary investors simply couldn't trust what corporations said.

Indeed, the one thing that comes clear in reading the oft-amended prospectus for Google's public offering is that investors must trust the founders.

This is something international investors can trust, something they understand.

Ultimately it could push up energy bills as investors no longer trust the Government so are charging more for the risk involved in building new energy infrastructure.