McGraw-Hill: One of the Most Influential Entities in the Financial Industry

McGraw-Hill Financial, Inc. is a publicly traded financial institution that offers publishing, financial and business services. The business was created in 1917 and is now a billion dollar venture with revenue of more than $4.9 billion.

McGraw-Hill is best known for being the parent business of Platts, J.D. Power and Associates, McGraw Hill Construction and the Standard & Poor’s. The holding company is also the majority stakeholder of the S&P Dow Jones Indices venture. Its companies are known as institutions in the financial industry and has very influence on how businesses run. The operations of the company are categorized into four segments basing it on the market they are engaged in: Standard & Poor’s, S&P Capital IQ, S&P Dow Jones Indices and its Commercial and Commodities Market.

Of its businesses, the S&P Dow Jones Indices is probably one of the most influential. It has global coverage and is listed as the world’s largest global resource for research, data and index-based concepts. It serves as the backbone of all the world’s indexed assets. It produces the world’s famous Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500. There are about 830,000 indices that the company calculates.

The business started out in 1888 when its founder James H. McGraw, purchased the American Journal of Railway Appliances. He then put up The McGraw Publishing Company in 1899 after acquiring several other publications. This publishing unit of the conglomerate works closely with the McGraw-Hill Education company. The name McGraw-Hill Publishing changed its brand name to The McGraw-Hill Companies to reflect corporate-rebranding of the business in 1995. It eventually changed its corporate name to McGraw-Hill Financial in 2013.

McGraw-Hill is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MHFI. It is also listed as a major component of the S&P 500.