The president of ratings agency Standard & Poor’s Deven Sharma has decided to step down and leave the company by the end of the year, Economic Times reported.  

The decision by Deven Sharma to resign comes as the rating agency is under pressure from all ends, including an enquiry by the Justice department into its ratings of subprime mortgage securities and a push by activist investors to break up its parent company.

Deven Sharma will be replaced by Douglas Peterson, a top executive at Citigroup, the company said. The change in the management had been in works for months and was unrelated to either the Justice Department’s inquiry or to the emergence of the activist investors Jana Partners and the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan.

Peterson who will replace Deven Sharma is currently the chief operating officer of Citibank, the banking unit of Citigroup. “We are pleased to welcome Doug to the important role of president of Standard & Poor's as it continues to build on the enhancements of recent years and accelerates global growth,"  said Harold McGraw III, McGraw-Hill's chief executive.

Standard & Poor’s is a well-known name in finance. It consists of 2 separate businesses namely its credit rating agency, and the other unit manages its index products like Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index.

S&P is a United States-based financial services company. It is a division of  The McGraw-Hill Companies that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks and bonds.