On the surface, the combination of S&P Global and IHS Markit appears both inevitable, given the frenzied consolidation of financial market infrastructure in recent years; and straightforward, given that both companies are built on data.  Smash the companies together, cut duplicative costs, cross-sell datasets, and combine the datasets into new products.  Easy.  But the deal’s […]

Banks, regulators, and fixed income investors rely on Moody’s and S&P to provide a consistent and standardized metric of credit risk across names and over time.  As I explained in The Self-Reinforcing Standards Moat:…ratings underpin the risk weightings that banks attach to assets to determine capital requirements, dictate which securities a money market fund can […]