Moody's personnel fail to follow guidelines

Moody's says it initiating employee disciplinary proceedings and reviewing measures to strengthen its monitoring process based on a review of certain European debt ratings.

Moody's Investors Service has said it would review whether computer errors wrongly assigned top-notch ratings to debt known as constant-proportion debt obligation, or CPDOs.

The review shows Moody's employees did not make changes to ratings criteria to hide the error. But, employees working on monitoring the ratings also did not meet the company's code of professional conduct, Moody's says.

Moody's says some employees considered inappropriate factors when reviewing the ratings after the computer error was discovered.