S&P Global Inc. (NYSE: SPGI)

S&P Global is one of the most powerful companies most people have never thought about. It owns S&P Ratings (one of three agencies that determine borrowing costs for governments and corporations worldwide), S&P Dow Jones Indices (including the S&P 500), and a massive data/analytics business. Revenue exceeds $13 billion. The 2022 merger with IHS Markit for $44 billion created a data and analytics powerhouse.

Four divisions: Market Intelligence (data, analytics, research — the largest), Ratings (credit ratings — the most profitable), Commodity Insights (energy and commodity data), and Mobility (automotive data, from the IHS Markit merger). Ratings revenue is tied to debt issuance volumes — when companies and governments borrow, S&P gets paid. Index licensing fees are essentially a tax on passive investing.

The company traces back to Henry Varnum Poor's 1860 publication of railroad financial data. Standard & Poor's was formed in 1941 from the merger of Standard Statistics and Poor's Publishing. McGraw-Hill acquired S&P and eventually renamed itself S&P Global in 2016. The IHS Markit merger closed in February 2022, creating the dominant financial data provider.