Italy Wants Art Counted as an Asset in Credit Rating

In the wake of the public outcry over Detroit’s art being treated as an asset of the City, the Italian government takes the opposite tack by suing a bond rating agency for its downgrades of Italian debt which increased the country’s financial woes. Italy wants its cultural heritage recognized on the country’s balance sheet!

Standard & Poor’s revealed on Tuesday it had been notified by Corte dei Conti that credit rating agencies may have acted illegally and opened themselves up to damages of €234bn, in part by failing to consider Italy’s rich cultural history when downgrading the country.

The potentially gigantic claim, which S&P dismissed as “frivolous and without merit”, relates to the string of downgrades the rating agency issued on Italian debt when the eurozone crisis intensified in 2011.

Notifying S&P that it was considering legal action, the Corte dei Conti wrote: “S&P never in its ratings pointed out Italy’s history, art or landscape which, as universally recognised, are the basis of its economic strength.”

Italy accuses S&P of not getting ‘la dolce vita’ (FT)