The market for bank bonds rallied on relief that the long wait for Moody's announcement was over and that Morgan Stanley's rating reduction was only two notches. "The ratings profile will be seen as having returned to stability," Scott Kimball, senior portfolio manager for Taplin, Canida & Habacht, a fixed-income investment firm affiliated with Bank of Montreal. The rally lifted hopes for an end to an eight-week drought in new bond issues from the biggest US banks. Moody's went through "an exceptionally deliberate and detailed process in a four-month review in coming to this", Bob Young, Moody's managing director for North American banking, said when asked about criticism from Citigroup and some outside analysts that Moody's was looking backwards with its downgrades. Mr Young said that the agency had looked closely at the history of failures of lower-rated banks in setting the new ratings.