When Michel Prada started openly raising concerns about credit rating agencies early last year, he drew parallels with the accounting industry in the early part of the decade. The head of the AMF, the French financial regulator, saw the potential for conflicts of interest akin to those that emerged in the audit profession when it moved into consulting.

The demands of winning and retaining clients in the more lucrative consultancy business came to threaten the integrity of audit work. It was a conflict that helped bring down Arthur Andersen following the collapse of Enron, the Texas-based energy trader whose books the accounting firm had audited. "I do hope that it does not take another Enron for everyone to look at the issue of rating agencies," Mr Prada told the Financial Times in March 2007.