S&P Global's Acquisition of IHS Markit Gets Conditional Green Light From EU

By Anthony O. Goriainoff

The European Commission said Friday that it has conditionally approved S&P Global Inc.'s proposed acquisition of IHS Markit Ltd.

The EU's executive branch said the approval was conditional on the divestment of some of IHS Markit's commodity price assessment services and a number of S&P Global businesses in the financial data and infrastructure area.

"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 EC's executive vice president Margrethe Vestager, said.

Earlier in the week the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority said that S&P Global Inc.'s planned $44 billion acquisition of IHS Markit Ltd. could harm competition within its markets and that it was considering whether to accept undertakings from the companies to address this.

The watchdog said then that it was concerned that the merger could lead to limited competition in a number of commodities markets. Specifically, it said the companies had significant combined presence in price assessments of biofuels, coal, oil, and petrochemicals in the U.K.

In November 2020 S&P Global agreed to acquire IHS Markit, in a deal that would combine two of the largest providers of data to Wall Street.

Write to Anthony O. Goriainoff at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

10-22-21 1221ET