How should one rate RAM’s plan to tie up with S&P?

OPINIONS are cheap. Everyone's got one and lest they hit one's pocketbook, it usually suffers a relegated in-one-ear-out-the-other fate.

So, when CIMB Group Holdings Bhd's group chief executive Datuk Seri Nazir Razak lambasted one of only two rating agencies in the country, RAM Holdings Bhd (their opinions, the sole purpose of their existence, on the other hand, are not cheap), recently for its still work-in-progress tie-up with a Western rating agency which has been jettisoned by the world due to glaring mis-ratings, did it hit home? It should have - like a stab.