The Dynamic Authority of Leading Financial Services Providers

Abstract

This chapter traces the dynamic authority of three sets of UK- and US-based financial services providers: the major American credit rating agencies Moody’s, Fitch and Standard & Poor’s; the global accounting firms Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and PwC; as well as the technology, information, and news corporations (TINCs) whose ranks include Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters and Dow Jones. The pre-crisis authority of these professionals that was long underpinned by expert identities was challenged by tensions stemming from their widespread failures in the 2007–8 global financial crisis. In the immediate aftermath of this period of instability leading Anglo-American financial services providers undertook explicit engagements with macro-level moral issues. These dispersed ethical emphases culminated in attempts to re-legitimate professional power by shifting identities from neutral providers of financial services to overt contributors to wider common concerns.