Rating Agency Perspectives with Retail Experts from S&P, Moody’s and Fitch

NeuGroup has established a long-standing tradition of bringing the major rating agencies into closed-session discussions with members and has gotten very positive feedback on the results. This session is intended to be an informal discussion where our Retail Treasury leaders ask these industry experts to cover topics including:
Rating Agency concerns/trends that are driving negative rating actions

• Credit themes and trends
• ESG: Environmental, social, and governance issues and the impact of the growth of ESG rating firms.
• Direct Q&A from members

We have encouraged our rating agency guests to openly address areas in which they disagree, and help our retail members understand the factors that most drive their rating analyses.

Lead Retail Analyst Guests:

• Monica Aggarwal: Managing Director, U.S. Retail and Consumer Team Head. Fitch Ratings
• Christina Boni: Senior Analyst Moody’s Investors Services
• Sarah Wyeth: Senior Director, Sector Lead – Retail and Restaurants. S&P Global Ratings
• Moderator – Anuja Desai: Executive Director. J.P Morgan

NeuGroup for Retail Treasury was formed in late 2019 based on requests from our Retail companies for a venue to discuss general treasury topics with peers, and items specific to the retail sector including optimizing the processing fee, real estate strategies, contactless payments, wire payments, ACH payments and other topics that quickly arise.

The group contains several subsectors, including food service companies, clothing companies, sporting goods companies, and large multiproduct retailers.

Interim meetings are meant for members of the specified peer group. These meetings originated in response to Covid-19 to keep members connected virtually in between semi-annual peer group meetings. They have a headline topic or topics presented for discussion, followed by an open forum for additional peer sharing and learning on other items.