Neil David Baron

Fitch Ratings, Inc. is a global rating agency and investment research firm headquartered in New York City. The firm was founded by John Knowles in 1913 as Fitch Publishing Co. They are a subsidiary of Fitch Group, Inc., ultimately owned by The Hearst Family Trust. Fitch Ratings seeks to provide independent and prospective credit opinions, research and data to the world's credit markets. Their approach is based on a foundation of local market experience that covers capital markets in over 150 countries. The firm's ratings analysis and rating decisions are based on established criteria, methodologies and ratings definitions which they apply in a consistent manner. Fitch Ratings provides coverage of the following markets: Economics, Banks, Insurance, Sovereigns, Corporates, Structured Finance, Public Finance – International, Public Finance – US, Infrastructure & Project, and Finance.

Standard & Poor's Financial Services provides financial market intelligence services. It offers credit ratings, indices, risk evaluation, investment research and data to the financial decision-makers. The company was founded in 1860 and is headquartered in New York, NY.

Criterion Research Group LLC is an independent research firm headquartered in New York City. They provide research based on their proprietary earnings quality accrual model and additional quantitative and qualitative screens developed by Criterion and Wharton accounting Professor Scott Richardson. Accruals are management's estimates of future cash flows and expenses that increase earnings and often turn out to be wrong due to error or management's prerogative to increase earnings. Criterion's accrual model quantifies the accrual component of the earnings of more than 5,000 public US companies (the CRG 5000) and sorts these companies into ten accrual categories within the CRG 5000 and the S&P 500. Companies in the 10th accrual decile have the highest accrual and lowest cash components to their earnings, and companies in the 1st accrual decile have the lowest accrual and highest cash components to their earnings