As Ratings Shopping Takes Off, Morningstar Dominates Canada (1)

For years, one credit-ratings firm has handed out the most favorable grades to corporate borrowers in the Canadian bond market: Morningstar DBRS. On average, its ratings are one full notch higher than those assigned by S&P Global Ratings, Moody’s Ratings and Fitch Ratings.

So when companies, eager to cut costs, suddenly started issuing a raft of bonds with only a single credit rating — instead of the two or three that had long been the norm — the firm they tapped, time and again, to assign them was DBRS. There were 111 such deals in 2025, more than the total ...