EU approves S&P’s $44B acquisition of IHS Markit
The European Commission approved on Friday the proposed $44 billion acquisition of IHS Markit by S&P Global.
“S&P Global and IHS Markit are leaders in the commodity and financial data markets. Without remedies, the merger would have limited customers access to some competitive and reliable data which is essential to ensure fairness of physical trades and financial markets. With this conditional approval the problematic overlaps in commodity price assessments, and also in the area of loan identifiers and indices are fully removed, to the benefit of competition,” the commission’s Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager said.
The European regulatory body was concerned that the acquisition would reduce competition and lead to price increases in markets for price assessments, loan identifiers, leveraged loan market intelligence and leveraged loan indices. The proposed remedies which led to approval include divestment of IHS Markit’s Price Information Service (OPIS), divestment of a number of S&P’s financial data and infrastructure businesses as well as its leveraged loan 100 index family.
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