Sales 2023: $ 12.500 billion (€ 11.560 billion)

Overview

S&P Global (formerly McGraw-Hill) is active in the field of financial information (“ratings, benchmarks, analytics") for the capital and commodity markets. The heart of the group is the internationally renowned rating agency "Standard & Poor's." S&P Global further expanded its market power. At the end of 2020, S&P announced the acquisition of its British competitor IHS Markit as part of a $44 billion share swap. The merger was completed on February 28, 2022. In the IfM ranking, S&P Global rose from 32nd place (2021 revenue: US$8.3 billion) to 25th place in 2023.

General Information

Headquarters:
55 Water Street
New York, NY 10041
USA
Telephone 001 212 438 1000
Website: investor.spglobal.com

Branches of trade: Specialist information, financial service providers, marketing, rating agencies
Legal form: Stock Company 
Financial year: 01.01. – 31.12.
Founding year: 1888 (1919 McGraw-Hill Publishing Company)  

	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019	2018
Revenue	12.497	11.842	8.297	7.442	6.699	6.258
Profit	4.019	3.765	3.311	2.830	2.123	1.958
Stock price (year end)	440,52	334,94	471,93	328,73	273,05	169,94
Employees	40.450	39.950	22.850	23.000	22.500	21.200

Executives and Directors

Management: 

• Douglas L. Peterson, President & CEO
• Ewout Steenbergen, Executive Vice President, CFO
• Martina L. Cheung, President, S&P Global Ratings
• Dan Draper, CEO, S&P Dow Jones Indices
• Adam Kansler, President, S&P Global Market Intelligence
• Steve Kemps, Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Office
• Swamy Kocherlakota, Executive Vice President, Chief Information Officer
• Nancy Luquette, Executive Vice President, Chief Risk & Compliance Officer
• Dimitra Manis, Executive Vice President, Chief Purpose Officer
• Sally Moore, EVP, Global Head of Strategy, M&A and Partnerships
• Saugata Saha, President, S&P Global Commodity Insights
• Edouard Tavernier, President, S&P Global Mobility

Supervisory Board:

• Richard E. Thornburgh, Credit Suisse Holdings
• Marco Alverà, Snam SpA
• Jacques Esculier, Former Chairman & CEO, WABCO Holdings Inc.
• Gay Huey Evans, Chairman, London Metal Exchange
• William D. Green, Former CEO and Chairman, Accenture
• Stephanie C. Hill, EVP, Lockheed Martin
• Rebecca Jacoby, former senior vice president, operations; Cisco Systems, Inc.
• Robert P. Kelly, Former Chairman and CEO, The Bank of New York Mellon
• Ian Livingston, Chairman, Currys plc
• Deborah D. McWhinney, Former Chief Executive Officer of Global Enterprise Payments, Citigroup Inc.
• Maria R. Morri, Former Executive Vice President, Global Employee Benefits, MetLife, Inc.
• Douglas L. Peterson, S&P Global Inc.
• Edward B. Rust, Jr., State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company
• Gregory Washington, President, George Mason University

History

S&P Global's predecessor was McGraw-Hill, and its history began at the height of the railway age. In 1888, James H. McGraw purchased the "American Journal of Railway Appliances" and then met John A. Hill, editor of "Locomotive Engineer." The two gradually built their own publishing companies for engineering journals. In 1909, they merged their book divisions, and after John Hill's death in 1917, the other divisions were consolidated into the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. In 1929, the company went public and founded the business magazine "Business Week." Other trade magazines from the fields of industry, transportation, and health were added. 

After World War II, McGraw-Hill expanded its textbook segment. In addition to the established series for college students, it now also published textbooks for elementary and secondary schools in all subject areas. In 1966, McGraw-Hill entered the field of business information and analysis with the purchase of the rating agency Standard & Poor's (founded in 1941 with the merger of the HV and HW Poor Co., founded in 1868 and publishing the twice-yearly "Poor's Manual of the Railroads of the United States," with the "Standard Statistics Bureau" established in 1906). A sensitive episode arose in 1970 when an unknown author offered one of McGraw-Hill's publishing houses a supposedly authorized biography of the dying, eccentric, and reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. The book was a fake, Hughes emerged from obscurity and sued the publisher and the author, who was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. 

In 1972, McGraw-Hill expanded into electronic media by acquiring television stations in San Diego, Indianapolis, and Denver, among others. In 1995, the company was restructured into three business divisions: Education, Financial Services, and Information & Media Services. By 1996, revenue had already exceeded three billion dollars. After a "non-family" interregnum from 1988 to 1998, Harold McGraw III, a descendant of one of the company's founders, led the publishing empire until 2013. 

The global financial crisis that began in 2007 also left its mark on McGraw-Hill. "2008 will long be remembered as one of the most difficult years for our country, our economy—and our company," wrote Harold McGraw III in the annual report published in early 2009. Sales fell by 6.2 percent to $6.36 billion, and profits plummeted by more than a fifth to $800 million. Far greater, however, was the damage to McGraw-Hill's reputation. With its exaggeratedly positive ratings of mortgage-backed securities, the rating agency was one of the key players in causing the housing bubble to burst. The U.S. Department of Justice subsequently sued McGraw-Hill on behalf of 19 states; the two ultimately agreed to a $1.4 billion fine, and in return, the agency dropped its investigation. Harold McGraw III admitted mistakes but defended his company's actions: "It is only small consolation that almost all market participants - banks, rating agencies, homeowners, regulators and investors - failed to foresee the ongoing decline in the US real estate and mortgage market," said the CEO. 

In 2009, the company sold its long-losing founding publication (founded in 1929), "Business Week," to Bloomberg. In 2011, McGraw-Hill sold the entire TV network to the EW Scripps Company. In 2012, the education division, "McGraw-Hill Education," was sold to the financial investor Apollo Global, along with the remnants of the traditional media business. Two name changes followed, first to McGraw-Hill Financial in 2013, and finally to S&P Global in April 2016.

Index providers were long considered money-printing machines, and their prices, including those of S&P, have skyrocketed. Investors, funds, and bankers rely on them for their investment decisions, not least due to advancing digitalization. At the same time, criticism is growing, for example from the European Fund Association, of the lack of transparency and the increased purchase prices charged by financial data companies. The United States, whose credit rating was controversially downgraded to just AA during the Obama administration based on an inaccurate forecast, is also complaining about S&P's influence.

management

In 2011, Douglas Peterson, born in 1959, joined the firm as President of Standard & Poor's Rating Services. In 2013, he was appointed CEO of the entire McGraw-Hill Group. Previously, he worked at Citigroup's Japanese subsidiary, where he distinguished himself through successful crisis management when the Japanese government investigated CitiBank for unfair trading practices in 2004. Peterson's main task remains to repair the rating agency's tarnished image (the fact that S&P downgraded the US credit rating for the first time in its history in 2011 didn't help relations with Washington either). "The criteria and methodologies must be refined and updated to prevent the misjudgments from before 2008 from being repeated," says Peterson. He is engaged in a constant PR battle with business journalists, politicians, and consumer advocates, who are increasingly questioning the usefulness and added value of rating agencies. 

Business Units

S&P Global Ratings (2021 revenue: €4.1 billion) operates offices in 27 countries and provides investors and other market participants with financial information and credit ratings. CRISIL, part of the ratings segment, acquired the data analytics firms Pragmatix Services Private and Panjiva, Kensho Technologies, and RateWatch in 2018.

S&P Global Market Intelligence (2021 turnover: 2.2 billion $): Financial services for investors, governments, associations and universities, among others 

S&P Global Platts (2021 revenue: EUR 950 million): Provider of financial information for the commodity and energy markets 

S&P Dow Jones Indices (2021 revenue: 1.1 billion TP4T) publishes several stock indices that generate license and subscription fees. Among them is the S&P 500, one of the world's most important stock indices, which tracks the shares of 500 of the largest US companies.

Current developments

S&P continues to expand its market power. In the second half of 2021, S&P announced the acquisition of its British competitor IHS Markit in a $44 billion share swap. At the end of October 2021, the European Commission cleared the planned acquisition subject to conditions, and in November of that year, the US government also approved the merger subject to conditions, including the spin-off of three business units. Upon completion of the merger in 2022, S&P/IHS will likely have combined revenues of approximately $10.5 billion and a workforce of 36,000 employees.