S&P Global Agrees to Buy IHS Markit

S&P Global Inc. agreed to acquire IHS Markit Ltd. for about $44 billion, the companies said, a landmark deal that would combine two of the largest providers of data to Wall Street. The all-stock deal, whose price tag includes $4.8 billion of net debt, is the largest of the year by that measure according to the Wall Street Journal. The deal would combine one of the oldest names in financial markets with a relative newcomer. S&P traces its roots to an 1860 compendium of information for railroad investors and is best known for its bond ratings and its stock-market indexes. IHS Markit, formed in 2016 by the merger of two smaller players, tracks millions of data points in financial markets. The London-based company owns software that big Wall Street banks use to underwrite corporate stock and bond offerings, and tracks transportation and energy data. Markit was founded in 2003 in a barn outside London by former TD Securities executive Lance Uggla and was backed in its early days by a group of large banks eager for transparent pricing data in the opaque world of credit derivatives. It went public in 2014. Mr. Uggla took over the combined company around the end of 2017 from his counterpart at IHS.