The European Commission approved the acquisition of HIS Markit by S&P Global, which are major global providers of commodity and financial data, under several conditions on the divestment of businesses in the areas of commodity price assessments and financial data.

The Commission focused on the global markets for commodity price assessments and market intelligence, credit ratings, financial data, indices, identifiers, and market intelligence products, especially in the loan value chain. The Commission was concerned that the acquisition would reduce competition which would lead to price increases and a reduction of choice and innovation in the markets for subject such as price assessments for oil, coal, biofuels and petrochemicals, loan identifiers, leveraged loan market intelligence and leveraged loan indices.

To address the Commission’s concerns, the undertakings offered the following commitments:

• In commodity price assessments, the divestment of IHS Markit's Oil Price Information Service (“OPIS”), including PetroChemWire, and Coal, Metals and Mining (“CMM”) businesses. The divestment fully removes the problematic overlap in relation to price assessments for oil, coal, biofuels and petrochemicals.
• In financial data and infrastructure, the divestment of a number of S&P Global businesses:
  • The divestment of S&P Global's CUSIP issuance and data licensing business (“CUSIP Global Services”). This divestment removes fully the overlap in the area of loan identifiers.
  • The divestment of S&P Global's leveraged loan 100 index family and its leveraged loan market intelligence product Leveraged Commentary and Data (LCD). This divestment (i) fully removes the overlap between S&P Global and IHS Markit in relation to leveraged loan indices, and (ii) ensures that the merged entity will not have any incentive to foreclose competitors in leveraged loan market intelligence.

These commitments remove the competition concerns identified by the Commission in the markets for commodity price assessments, loan identifiers, leveraged loan indices and leveraged loan market intelligence. Thus, the Commission considered that the transaction would no longer raise competition concerns.

(European Commission – 26.10.2021)

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