Fitch Investors, IBCA in Merger Talks

Fitch Investors Service said it’s in merger talks with London-based IBCA Ltd. in hopes of creating a credit-rating agency that would challenge industry leaders Standard & Poor’s Corp. and Moody’s Investors Service. For New York-based Fitch, which earned about $10 million on sales of about $65 million in 1996, the deal would tie its mostly U.S. operations with IBCA’s mostly European, Asian and Latin American operations. Fitch is the third-largest credit-rating agency in the U.S. Bringing the two companies together would link Fitch’s expertise in municipal-bond and asset-backed bond issues--such as credit card securitizations--with IBCA’s specialization in rating sovereign nations, banks and other financial borrowers. Fitch and IBCA representatives wouldn’t comment on the structure of a merger, when the talks began or if either firm had hired an investment advisor.