Responding to criticism that its corporate rating changes have been far too slow, particularly in the case of Enron Corp., Moody’s Investors Service said on Friday it was considering making changes in how it rates companies.

The changes, which Moody’s said it should be ready to discuss in a few weeks, could cause ratings to rise or fall much faster, affecting companies’ abilities to raise capital and in some cases, continue to operate.

A spokesman said the agency is considering a number of measures to improve the timeliness of rating actions. Moody’s is preparing a special comment on the matter, to be issued in a few weeks, he said. The changes could include more multi-notch upgrades or downgrades of company ratings; a speeding up of rating reviews into a matter of weeks, rather than a few months, and perhaps the elimination of rating outlooks, which suggest the possible future direction of a rating.

Moody’s already changes the ratings of one in five issuers a year. Downgrades outpaced upgrades nearly 3-to-1 last year, the worst ratio since 1991.

Analysts said the changes could benefit financial markets because investors expect agencies to be better informed than the public at large. “Moody’s is correctly recognizing that the markets are becoming more volatile, and that they may need in some cases to act more quickly,” said one analyst.

On Thursday, in the wake of Enron’s unraveling, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt wrote in The New York Times that rating agencies have “quasi-public responsibilities” and “should show greater accountability.”

Earlier this week, S&P and Fitch said they had begun to focus more on liquidity, or the ability of companies to access the cash they need to run their businesses. Moody’s said it intends to do the same.

CreditSights Inc., a New York-based fixed-income research service, said in a report last week that a policy shift by Moody’s could have the effect of making it “more difficult for (borderline) credits to survive an economic downturn.”

“If Moody’s moves ahead with these changes,” it said, “it would mark a major structural change in the corporate bond market that could lead to structurally higher volatility.”

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