McGraw Hill Plans to Shed Family Name After 128 Years
February 04 2016 - 8:50AM
Dow Jones News
McGraw Hill Financial Inc. is preparing to change its name to
S&P Global Inc. later this year, a symbolic move that
underscores the firm's shift away from its publishing roots.
The new name has received approval from McGraw Hill's board, and
company officials will soon file a proposal seeking to amend the
firm's moniker, Chief Executive Officer Douglas L. Peterson said in
an interview. Shareholders will vote on the matter on April 27 at
the company's annual meeting.
The move to drop the McGraws from the company's name for the
first time in its 128-year history follows decisions in recent
years to spin off its education division and move the corporate
headquarters from a midtown Manhattan skyscraper bearing the
founder's name to a location downtown.
"The name of McGraw Hill, which is an absolutely fantastic
brand, didn't necessarily fit the rest of the company," said Mr.
Peterson, a former Citigroup Inc. executive who took over as CEO in
2013. "McGraw Hill is definitely seen as a publishing brand."
McGraw Hill is the parent company of Standard & Poor's
Ratings Services, the world's largest ratings firm, as well as two
other divisions with the S&P name—S&P Capital IQ and
S&P Dow Jones Indices. It also operates a major
commodities-pricing division.
Under Mr. Peterson, McGraw Hill has repositioned itself as a
global data analytics firm. The company bought financial-data
provider SNL Financial LC last year for $2.2 billion and said it
was exploring a strategic review of its J.D. Power division, best
known for customer-satisfaction surveys.
The Wall Street Journal reported early last year that senior
executives and employees were having informal discussions about
changing the McGraw Hill name. Harold "Terry" McGraw III, the
great-grandson of the company's founder and a former CEO of the
company, relinquished his chairmanship of McGraw Hill last
year.
Mr. Peterson said the name change has the support of all board
members, as well as Mr. McGraw, who is chairman emeritus. Interest
in calling the firm S&P Global picked up over the past nine
months, Mr. Peterson said.
In 1966, McGraw Hill purchased S&P, a company that produced
bond evaluations, and whose own origins date back to 1860,
according to the company's website.
McGraw Hill also reported its fourth-quarter earnings on
Thursday. The copany swung to a fourth-quarter profit of $248
million, or 91 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of
$846 million, or $3.11 a share. Excluding restructuring- and
acquisition-related expenses and other items, per-share earnings
from continuing operations were $1.04. Revenue increased 7% to
$1.37 billion. Excluding currency effects, the growth was 8%.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected adjusted profit of
$1.01 a share and revenue of $1.38 billion.
For the year, McGraw Hill Financial forecast per-share earnings
of $5 to $5.15 and revenue growth in the mid to high single digits
on a percentage basis. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected
per-share profit of $4.88 and revenue of $5.82 billion.
Write to Timothy W. Martin at timothy.martin@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 04, 2016 08:35 ET (13:35 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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