S&P Global at Barclays Conference: Strategic Focus on AI and Data

On Tuesday, 09 September 2025, S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI) participated in the Barclays 23rd Annual Global Financial Services Conference. CEO Martina Cheung outlined the company’s strategic priorities, emphasizing AI integration and data management. The approach is evolutionary, not revolutionary, focusing on enhancing products and internal processes. While S&P Global is optimistic about leveraging AI and data, it faces challenges in adapting to market trends and ensuring data security.

Key Takeaways

• S&P Global is focusing on AI integration to enhance products and internal processes.
• The company emphasizes the value of data curation and unique classifications.
• S&P Global expects a stable outlook for M&A activity and bill issuance this year.
• The company is strengthening partnerships to broaden data distribution and access.
• S&P Global is cautious about transformative M&A but open to additive opportunities.

Financial Results

• Full-year bill issuance is expected to see marginal growth year-over-year.
• The company anticipates up to 50 basis points in rate cuts.
• M&A activity is projected to remain flat compared to last year.
• Strong net inflows in equity indices and good trading volumes were reported in Q2.

Operational Updates

• AI Integration: Two-thirds of employees are using the S&P Spark Assist platform, with over 3,000 prompts created. The integration of generative AI is expected to reduce headcount in the Enterprise Data Office.
• Chief Client Office: The team is engaging with about 130 clients, achieving significant wins recently.
• Enterprise Data Office: Focused on creating an enterprise-wide data fabric to connect data at more discrete levels.
• Private Credit: S&P Global is investing in analytical capacity to rate private credit deals.

Future Outlook

• Investor Day in November will cover primary growth areas, businesses, AI, and mobility processes.
• The strategy remains evolutionary, with a three-year plan for Market Intelligence.
• S&P Global is not pursuing transformative M&A but is interested in opportunities that add to its core or align with growth themes.

Q&A Highlights

• Data Proprietary Nature: Emphasis on curation, classification, and alignment to enhance data value. Strict licensing and usage policies are in place for partnerships with LLMs and hyperscale partners.
• Market Intelligence Competitive Moats: Continued investment in unique and differentiated data. Focus on delivering IP to clients in their preferred formats.
• Ratings: The outlook assumes rate cuts and a shift towards investment-grade issuance. Consistent methodologies are maintained between public and private ratings.
• Vendor Consolidation: Early progress with momentum from the Chief Client Office.

In conclusion, S&P Global’s strategic focus on AI and data management was highlighted at the conference. For more details, please refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Barclays 23rd Annual Global Financial Services Conference:

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: All right. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for being here. My name is Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, for those of you who don’t know me. We’re very pleased to have with us today Martina Cheung, the CEO of S&P Global. Martina, thank you for being here.

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: Thanks, Manav.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Maybe first question, it’s been about 10 months, I think, since you officially took over as the CEO. Maybe just some initial thoughts on how life’s been since you took over and maybe some of your strategic priorities that you’ve brought to the table.

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: Yeah, thanks, and it’s great to be here. I would say it’s been a very active and exciting 10 months. Obviously, we had the four-month transition period from the announcement through my official start date last year. Clearly, with some of the changes that we announced right out of the gate, we had, I would say, an intent to function more as an enterprise leadership team. We brought that to bear in two very visible ways and a lot of ways that are not so visible but equally beneficial. We’ve seen great progress with our enterprise data organization that is making very good headway on the creation of an enterprise-wide data fabric and accelerating our ability to really connect our data at much more discrete levels than we’ve done in the past. That creates room for growth in many different ways.

We’ve made a lot of progress with our Chief Client Office. Of course, we talked a little bit about some of the examples of how that’s bearing fruit for the various different groups around the company in the past couple of quarters. It’s about 130 clients, and we’ve got some nice chunky wins there and some good momentum with that team. I think the first priority really was to have the team start to bring the full force of S&P Global to bear with our clients, make it more seamless for our clients. The reception has been very strong. We’ve also had, I would say, very strong momentum in other parts of the business. I know you’ll have plenty of questions on Market Intelligence, but that’s been an area, obviously, that was a huge priority for us also.

Just to tee it up with maybe those two examples, and then we can go from there.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Maybe ask another way. You have your Investor Day coming up in November. It’ll be around a year-plus mark since you took over. What are some of the things we should expect at that Investor Day to look forward to?

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: Maybe to contextualize it, we’ve said consistently in the last couple of quarters that the strategy, as we think about it, is evolutionary, not revolutionary. I think that’s a good framework and an expectation setting in advance of Investor Day. Of course, we’ll cover all the topics that we know you have an interest in and that are strategic and important for us, such as our primary growth areas, how we think about our businesses, how we think about AI, and other key topics. These are all things that we expect to cover at that point. We’ll give you a little bit of an update at that point on the mobility process also.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Got it. Before we get into some of the business segments, I wanted to stay high level. Just in terms of the AI topic that you brought out, a lot of questions out there. From your perspective as CEO of a company that has, you know, many different assets, many different verticals, is AI hype, is it real, is it both? Just how are you thinking about the use cases within S&P Global?

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: Yeah, if I start, perhaps first with the internal piece of it on how we integrated internally within our overall systems. I think, as you know, we’ve been pretty vocal over the last few years on the impact that Kensho has had on us. It’s really remarkable. That organization, that team, punches so far above its weight in terms of what it brings across the overall enterprise. They’re running the S&P Spark Assist platform that we’ve spoken about. We have about two-thirds of our employees using the Spark Assist platform. We have north of 3,000 prompts that have been created. All of our employees are creators now. Those prompts can be available for reuse across all of our colleagues across the organization. The next step for us, because clearly that’s helpful, in many ways, the benefits from Spark are sort of individual and bespoke to the individual.

It’s very hard to truly quantify that. We’ve got some really nice scaled examples in discrete teams. I think we’ve got more work to do. We’ve got larger projects underway, looking at bigger teams like research teams, like technology teams. In fact, Enterprise Data Office (EDO) is probably a really good example of where we’re integrating generative AI at speed as well. The way we think about that, for example, within EDO is we look at the headcount. This year, we will experience the most people that we expect to see in the EDO organization. As we go forward with the integration of generative AI, of course, we’d expect to see a trajectory on that one that looks lower than where we are today. I think the benefit of us being able to really get to the value extraction is through some of these larger initiatives that we’re doing.

I suppose one thing that I would make a point on, hopefully it doesn’t sound too simplistic, but there’s a kind of a, in order to be able to really extract the value, I think there’s a building narrative out there that this is about hype. I only agree with that if you think that you can just dump a tool in front of somebody and extract the value from it. To really extract the value from something like generative AI, we believe that there’s some very fundamental core process re-engineering that’s needed to go alongside it. This is part of what we’re tackling in some of these larger projects that we’re talking about as well. On the product side, we’re very excited. We have lots, and you’ll see it through the announcements that we make.

We have lots of really strong enhancements to our products going out across all of our businesses. We announced Credit Companion, for example, in the last several months. Even in our index business, we have brought to bear the Spice Index Builder, which really has transformed the experience of building custom indices for our clients, bringing that process down quite dramatically from about a month to just a couple of days. Through that tool, our clients get access to north of 400,000 different indices available. We’re finding ways to enhance and remove some, you know, annoying manual things for clients, whether it’s ingesting data seamlessly through generative AI on, you know, Wall Street Office or iLevel, all the way to something as transformative as what we’ve done with Spice Index Builder. We also see that there are opportunities through partnering with some of the LLMs, the hyperscale partners.

You’ve seen a lot of that as well. I think we’ll be able to provide a kind of a point-in-time view more holistically when we come back with the IR Day because this space is just moving so quickly. We’re moving very quickly with it, and then we can give you updates on that as we go.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Got it. Maybe just one follow-up then. We’ll wait for IR Day for all the product updates. On the cost side, your point on working through the debt, the tech integration, like you can’t just get an AI product and pop it goes. How long does that process take? I guess the investors want numbers now, right? How much you’re going to save on cost? I guess to your point, it’s not as easy.

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: What I would say is it’s going to vary. It’s going to vary on the complexity of the group. It’s going to vary on the types of ways in which GenAI will impact a given role. I think, let us come back to you with maybe sort of how we think about the complexity of the different roles. Just to give you a sense, one of the things we immediately got questions from investors right out of the gate on things like GitHub and GitHub Copilot, et cetera. One of the things that our CTOs have been doing for many years is they’ve been actually using open source for many years. Some organizations who were getting this big benefit from using GitHub Copilot maybe hadn’t been using open source. I think it varies.

It varies on how sophisticated we’ve been prior to that, as well as the type of role that we’re talking about and the degree of transformation within that role or indeed within that entire process and value chain. Not just looking at a developer, but looking at the software development lifecycle, right? We’ll come back with more.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Fair enough. Yeah. Somewhat tied to it, but a lot of questions around data, and what is proprietary, what is not proprietary. Across your portfolio, you own a whole range of data sets. Maybe from your perspective, you know, how would you characterize true proprietary data versus, you know, because there’s a view that if something is available public, that means someone’s going to go get it and you’re done, right? The history, the curation, all that matters. I don’t know if you have a perspective on how you look at your portfolio and how you characterize your data, modes today.

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: Yeah, we, look, I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I think you raised the right point there, which is even if something is publicly available, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s got the right classification system that you can use that data set interchangeably with other data sets very easily. This, of course, is part of the value that we bring, right? A huge part of the value that we bring is the ability to use common classifications or identifiers to link data very easily and very transparently across different areas, not just within one division at S&P Global, but across multiple divisions. This is very much where we’re focused for our Enterprise Data Office. I think the response that we’ve gotten to something as simple as Kensho grounding for S&P Global financial data, which in theory is public, is very positive.

I think that’s one reference point to understand the value of being able to ask a question in an LLM and get an answer back that is grounded and assessed as accurate from an S&P Global perspective, right? I think it’s important to understand the power of even when it’s a public data set, when it’s been curated and aligned, deduped, and adjusted using our methodologies, data’s classifications. You can look at that across various different data sets. You can look at data sets that come from what would be our, maybe our unique and independent kind of areas, whether it’s our benchmarks, maybe index division, our ratings, et cetera. We have to look at all of these in the same way in terms of how we think about protection of our data in the context of this new kind of LLM ecosystem, this hyperscale partner ecosystem.

That is, we look at it from the perspective of ensuring that we understand exactly what the LLM or hyperscale partner is licensed to do with the data and exactly whether or not we are open to putting some of our data in there without a direct license, versus others. Now, think about this in the context of any other third-party distribution partnership that we would do right now. What we’ve started with, with the LLM providers is, number one, you can only access it. It’s basically another distribution channel, right? You can turn it on if you’re already licensed to it. If you want to get licensed to it, you come directly to us and you can turn it on. You can’t turn it on if you do not have an S&P Global license.

We retain the direct relationship and the LLMs are not allowed to use the data for training purposes. I think we’re going to get more nuanced and sophisticated around how we think about working in this ecosystem as we go forward. We’ve announced a great number of partnerships, as you’ll have seen. I think the cloud one has gotten quite a bit of attention, but we’ve been working very diligently with key partners like Microsoft for Copilot, with Google, with a number of the other players. I think it’s important to understand that we’re covering the breadth and depth of the key strategic players that we believe will be important in this space going forward and doing that in ways that allow us to mature how we think about partnering with them.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Got it. Maybe taking that into segment specifics of market intelligence and Cap IQ even specifically. We’ve seen LSEG, FactSet, and other shares take the hit because of this fear that, oh, the desktop, who’s got proprietary data, is the workflow distribution at risk? How do you answer that question in terms of being comfortable with your competitive moats in there?

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: I think if you think about just the fact that we sit on so much data, and now with the Enterprise Data Office (EDO), every part of the organization is going to have access to all kinds of different data sets. I think first and foremost, it’s not just the data that we sit on today, but our ability through the EDO to create new and unique views of that data and to continue to essentially hydrate all of our channels, whether it’s the desktop or some of the other feeds products that we use. That’s one way to look at it, which is that we will continue to invest in ensuring that our data is as unique and proprietary and/or just differentiated in other ways from what others can offer. That’s an important point not to be forgotten.

I think the second point is to say that we’ve always taken a view that we have to get our IP or our data in front of clients wherever they want to receive it. I remember a conversation years ago when I was running in mind, there were some in MI who thought, oh my gosh, we cannot use platforms like Databricks and Snowflake, they’re going to cannibalize us. Of course they didn’t, and of course we have phenomenal relationships with both of those players. Today, in terms of how we distribute, very much part of what many clients use in terms of how they access data. It’s important for us to be on the front foot in how we think about these partners, whether they’re for distribution purposes, etc., and very much from the client back. How does the client want to access our IP, etc.?

The third point that I would make is, and this is also just a very important point to make, it could be that you could get an answer on S&P Global’s financials from an LLM. If you want to connect that, you want to compare it, you want to extract that into Excel using consistent formulas, you want to do a whole bunch of other stuff with it. The question is going to be, does the LLM want to take those extra steps with you? It’s pretty complex stuff. We don’t know. We know that these players are moving extremely quickly, and we’re right there in the conversations with them to make sure that we’re paying attention and we’re partnering with them to create opportunity for our clients and for ourselves. I think the space is moving so quickly.

It’s going to be one that unfolds over a period of time. What I’m focused on is making sure that we are absolutely in the conversations with our customers, and we are through the CCO as well as the broader sales teams. That’s number one. Number two is making sure that we are as close as possible to the key players that we think will survive through the next five, ten years, and that we understand how we can partner with them to create value. We’re doing that as well. You’ll see, as you’ve seen, all these announcements of ways in which we’re partnering with them.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Got it. One of the other areas the market’s always worried about is if a company has a per seat model, and therefore there could be, you know, cuts, whether it’s headcount related or budget related. I think you guys have a data license focus as opposed to seat license focus. Can you just talk about that? Is everything enterprise or is there a seat sensitivity to how you sell your business on MI specifically? Let’s keep it there.

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: Yeah, so MI, with the exception of maybe places where we have kind of bespoke managed services contracts, for example, it’s enterprise, but it’s bespoke to a specific client. I think we are, and again, the only other point I would make then is there’s a little bit of kind of recurring variable revenue that’s different, but then it’s largely subscription that is enterprise license in nature. While it doesn’t a hundred percent protect from, let’s say, a client who may be not healthy or something like that, it’s desensitized to seat-based license reduction. We’re very much focused on value-based pricing. The conversations that we have with our customers are to say, look, notwithstanding, let’s say, seats and number of people using aside, there were so many other variables taken into consideration.

The types of content that’s being used, the value of that content in the context of the decisions, and the nature of the decisions that it’s enabling or informing, the ability to interact with our specialists, our application specialists, et cetera, and a variety of other ways in which you create massive value that have very little to do with the actual number of seats that exist with customers. The value-based pricing that desensitizes us to the seat-based licensing that perhaps you might see with other players, in the context of, frankly, any upward or downward trajectory, not just AI, obviously, we’ve seen seats in the financial industry move over time upwards and downwards.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Got it. You know, one of the themes that keeps coming up in the market data space has been the consolidation, both from a contract standpoint and from just more M&A, I guess. In the last year, you did Visible Alpha. I think you were part of SNL way back when. In terms of contracts, for example, you signed the Barclays deal as well. Just curious, is this theme finally picking up steam? Do you expect a lot more M&A out there, or maybe just your own ambitions within MI on capital allocation?

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: I think I would say, some of it was a few questions in there.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: It’s broadly vendor consolidation.

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: Vendor consolidation.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: MI strategy.

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: Gotcha. I think from a vendor consolidation perspective, we continue to be well-visioned. I would say the Chief Client Office is very much front and center in this dialogue because obviously they’re speaking with many of the largest accounts that have these types of opportunities that may have built up large numbers of vendors over time. It’s important to note that it’s not just a dollars and cents opportunity for the client. It’s also an opportunity to reduce complexity, to reduce needs for compliance in different areas, particularly for those that have maybe more onerous regulatory compliance challenges, for example. On top of that, you can put in the opportunity to get access to some of the best quality data through a single player or maybe two named players or however a particular client decides to pursue it.

That in and of itself is a conversation that also then allows us to actually say, right, here’s everything you’re getting. We can take these other pieces in aggregate. We can potentially make that less expensive for you. We can get to know these other groups across the organization and continue to ensure that we’re providing the best of S&P Global to you. That’s sort of thematically the way that we see these opportunities going. I think it’s, frankly, early innings for us on this. I think we’ve got some really great momentum. We’ve had some fantastic examples from the Chief Client Office this year, Barclays included. I think this plays out over a period of time, not necessarily immediately. Obviously, as you know, some of these contracts will renew in different time periods.

The one thing that is consistent is just the interest in partnering with us at a more strategic level. We can’t, I mean, we don’t just do that in the Chief Client Office. There will be many, many more clients outside of the Chief Client Office that can benefit from that. The Chief Client Office is basically giving the playbook, if you like, to the Chief Commercial Officers, particularly in MI and CI, to enable additional conversations even outside of the CCO. That’s one thing. I think the strategy for Market Intelligence, obviously, we will come back and provide the overall kind of three-year plan around that. It’s been one, I think Erica has a nice phrase that the leadership team has been working on, you know, on both sides of the P&L on this.

I think that’s one of the reasons why we’ve yielded some results that we’re very proud of this year, and why we continue to see the growth there into the back half. A lot of that is very much around solid execution. There’s the commercial transformation that we talked about in terms of the commercial model, but there’s also the ability to integrate Visible Alpha. We’ve seen that, as well as to get other tools working for the organization. For example, we did a capability acquisition call for Terahelix, which is one of the things that will actually allow us to accelerate the integration of our data in the Enterprise Data Office that will benefit not just MI, but others as well. Does that, I can go into M&A, but.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Yeah, we can go into M&A. In terms of just, and maybe you can even take M&A beyond, you know, in terms of the overall portfolio you’re spending on mobility, how you feel about the assets that you have as well.

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: Yeah. From an M&A perspective, we’re consistent in that we don’t have an appetite for transformative M&A. I mean, this is something that I think we’ve said consistently over the last year. We’ve also said that we are interested in looking at opportunities if they’re very additive to our core or if they’re consistent with the growth themes that we’ve been highlighting throughout the course of the last year as well. I think that answer is going to be consistent to what we’ve seen in the past. We’ve also said that we don’t necessarily think we have to own everything. If there are opportunities for us to partner, we’ll do that as well. We’ve had some great opportunities to partner on various different things. The UBS Leveraged Loan Index is a great example of that.

For example, we didn’t need to own the index, but we can run the index, working with UBS. That’s something that obviously we’re very well positioned to do from the S&P Dow Jones perspective. I think the last point, quite simplistically, is we’re passionate in that we have such great assets and connecting these assets in new and different ways gives us different opportunities for growth and the key reason why we set up the Enterprise Data Office.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Got it. Let’s shift gears to ratings. You used to run ratings before you took over all of S&P Global. The first question is just more near-term outlook-ish type questions. The July data you put out was pretty good. Just your take on what the near-term trends look like with all this rate cut discussion. Is that going to help? Is it going to change things? Are people pulling forward?

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: Yeah. Important to mention that our outlook for the year for bill issuance and for the top line from a transaction revenue perspective assumes up to 50 basis points in rate cuts. We didn’t, the economist team, just because of how almost real-time some of the inflation data and other data has been coming in, have not made any projection around it’s two times 25, or one time 50, or the specific timing of it necessarily. That’s been consistent from the get-go this year. I will say we have also seen, and we’ve said that we would see a heavier skew towards investment grade this year. That held out certainly in the first half where we saw investment grade grow faster than high yield.

We have also said that we saw a modest pull forward and didn’t have massive assumptions around pull forward for the full year, and that remains true also. All that to say that we would see the back half of the year being roughly flat year over year, and that would give us a result of sort of marginal, very, very marginal growth in bill issuance for the full year. Now, because of the announcements in the market and getting asked a lot of questions about M&A, our outlook for the year assumed roughly flat year over year M&A. We remind people that we’re watching the M&A pipelines as much as anybody else is watching them. To the extent that maybe something gets held back from this year, it could come in 2026, it could come in 2027. That’s something that we always keep track of.

All this to say, the market moves so quickly, there are so many factors that can be taken into consideration, and nobody saw April coming. I think we take a very balanced view. Four months, roughly left in the year, and that’s a lot of time in the market given the amount of volatility we’ve seen. That’s some of the puts and takes on it.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Got it. Just thinking more medium to even longer term, I think most investors have a view that right now a lot of the issuance over the last year or so has been, call it, refi driven, for the lack of a better word. If M&A comes back, there’s a lot more incremental issuance to be had. Is that a fair assumption?

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: I think it’s a good question, and it depends on the mix of high yield, investment grade, whether it’s opportunistic issuance, M&A, refi, et cetera. Just to give you a sense, and I would say maybe I’ll characterize this just in the context of 2025, because obviously I’m not commenting on 2026 or beyond. We said, for example, that we didn’t see much, really, of anything refinancing from 2027, 2028 back into the back half of 2025. The reason for that is that a lot of those deals were issued in the 2020, 2021 timeframe when the rates were just very, very low. There’s not a lot of incentive essentially for those issuers to come to market. They’re likely watching very, very closely how things are going with interest rates, for example.

Some of the investment grades will take advantage of, and we saw them take advantage in the back half to the front half of this year when spreads were very tight. Spreads, of course, are a function here as well. That’s the comment on sort of how we see the refi story for the back half of this year.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Got it. Maybe just a quick word on the refi walls. I think they build up pretty nicely over the next three to four years, but maybe just some context around that.

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: Yeah, quite healthy refi walls. We do publish on that, as you know, every quarter. I suppose I kind of pre-answer the question in the sense that we see a lot of high yields refi in 2027 and 2028. The challenge there, of course, is the timing of it and what it could look like from a pull forward. It’s very hard to see any incentive on pull forward given where the rates were when those deals were issued.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Got it. Private credit, another topic that comes up a lot. Maybe I know, I know there’s different angles to private credit, but let’s just stick to just the rating side for now. You know, just give us some perspective on, you know, how you think of a size private credit within ratings. It feels like it was, it’s a newer focus and a newer strategy. What is that strategy?

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: Yeah. This has been something that’s a huge priority for ratings, going back to 2022, 2021. We’ve always done private credit. I think it was a real step up, let’s say, between 2021 and 2022. At that point, we were very vocal about telling all of you how we were focusing in. We were ensuring we had the right people in the commercial teams to go out and engage all the market participants. We were also saying we were focused on making sure we had invested in the analyst capacity to ensure that we had the capacity to rate deals also. Now, it’s important to distinguish. A lot of people will immediately sort of associate in their heads when you say private credit, well, that was an issue where they could have issued in the public market or the private market.

In fact, for us, it’s as much about the private market sponsors driving structured credit issuance as it is the classic issuer that may choose to go private. When you think about that and you take a step back, it’s meant that we’ve invested in analytical capacity across S&P Global Ratings. It also meant that the capacity that we preserved in 2022 was really put to good use over the last couple of years within ratings as well. We will rate what you might think of as maybe classic private credit, the issuers that go private. We rate, we can provide credit estimates against portfolios, against individual portfolio companies, private credit assessments, fund ratings, BDCs. That’s maybe like how you might classically think of it. We’re also seeing a lot of attention and interest and demand from sponsors in asset-backed finance.

The classic one, just because it’s very relatable, is data center securitizations. We’ve seen a lot of demand for that in the U.S., for example, and an uptick in demand on that in Europe over the past year, I would say a year to two in particular. We also see growth in interest in CLOs and middle market CLOs from sponsors as well. It really is quite a broad range in terms of the types of issuance that we’re seeing from the sponsors. I forgot to say infrastructure because that’s usually an enormous one from several of the sponsors also. It is an area that is touching all parts of our business. We’re positioned against it, I would say, very strategically. The AUM more broadly is growing quite significantly in that area. We continue to monitor that. We continue to stay in touch with the market participants.

Very importantly, as a last point, we think that investors need to see and understand quality between public and private using the same methodology. In other words, you can understand the quality of something, whether it issues in public or private. That is more important even now because of the movement between public and private. We see issuers this year, for example, in the first half, we saw more issuers refinancing from private to public than we did from public to private. That is really important because the ability to understand that credit or that issuer, whether they’re in a private portfolio or public, is facilitated by our methodology. That is not always true for every other credit rating agency in the market.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Got it. You kind of answered my next question, which is you still see a lot of individual deals get funded by private credit, i.e., without a rating. We always get the question, is that share loss? Is that structural? You just talked about how there’s a lot of instances where private goes to public. Maybe can you just help us frame some context around how much of the deals actually you’re losing, if at all, if you considered losing, just to help appreciate that dynamic?

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: I guess I would say it. Firstly, we look at this. Of course, we’d love to be able to really get all the facts around this, but it’s just very hard to understand the denominator for this. That’s one thing. It’s kind of almost impossible to answer the question holistically. The other point that I would make to this is we are not going to be the right credit rating agency for everyone. This predates, you know, by decades, the most recent, or even more than decades, the most recent push from a sponsor perspective. We’re a rating agency that works with a particular level from a methodology standpoint. We solve for quality, we solve for transparency and objectivity. We don’t necessarily solve for rating a very small, deep spec grade credit at a high level.

There are deals that we would never see, regardless of what’s happened in the private markets. We just would never have seen them. That’s okay with us, because that’s not, we compete on consistent methodology up and down the scale. The other point that I would make is we may also not be the right credit rating agency for, you know, that’s on the issuer front. We may also not be the right credit rating agency for every startup, GP. We were very, very targeted in ensuring that we made outreach to and were in the dialogue, the deal dialogue with the largest, disciplined and scaled GPs. That’s been a consistent approach for us. I think you’ve put it that way as sort of like that, that’s how I would characterize it, that we focus on the part that we think is meaningful for us.

We’re very pleased with the results on that.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Got it. How about private credit beyond ratings? Judging from all the money that a lot of the other financial info peers are paying for acquiring assets and themselves investing in data, what does S&P Global’s portfolio of private credit assets look like?

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: Yeah, so we’re pretty excited about some of the momentum that we have with assets that are quite differentiated in the market. WSO, for example, is heavily differentiated in the credit markets overall, private credit also. That gives us the ability to see quite a bit of the flow, the data around the flow. We also have services such as ClearPaw and others. All of these are very much credit vertical services that give us the opportunity to meet both what’s happening in the public market as well as the private market. I think we are incredibly well positioned. We are excited about those assets. We spent time thinking about how we can ensure that we’ve got those assets connected up in the right ways.

We partner with the Chief Client Offices, our MI partners with the Chief Client Office to make sure that we are positioning those assets very well within our constituent and client base to ensure that we’re maximizing the opportunity. There’s no question that our opportunities for private credit specifically are very strong in MI. Of course, the index team, our S&P Dow Jones index team, has been moving proactively to ensure that we look at what we’ve been able to do with UBS leveraged loan indices, for example, and ways in which we can continue to innovate around private credit there.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Got it. Maybe in the last three minutes, since you brought up index, let’s talk about index a bit. You know, there’s a lot of market chat around U.S. exceptions and dying and so forth going outside. Just what are you seeing on the S&P side? You know, beyond just relying on flows, you talked about innovation with UBS and so forth. Maybe a few more examples on how you can grow beyond just flows.

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: Yeah. We’re very pleased with our results in Q2 on index. I think despite the market narrative, we saw net inflows, very strong net inflows in our equity indices. That’s part of the reason why we saw good results in our asset-linked fees. Of course, we have an incredible franchise around exchange-traded derivatives, and we benefit there in times of volatility. We’ve seen good average daily trading volumes there that drove some strong results as well. I think some of the other exciting areas for us will be what we’ve been able to do post the merger with that collection of assets around multi-asset class product launches. We’re very excited about some of the fixed income opportunities there as well.

Some of the other things that I think are areas where I feel like we’re very well positioned with the team is pivoting off some of the interesting stuff that we did with Luca a few years ago in crypto, for example. We’ve now launched the first S&P 500 ETF (tokenized) that gives exposure to the 500 on chain, and we’re doing some other very interesting things there. We’ve launched a Top 10 Private Stock Index as well. Some really interesting areas going all the way from the traditional kind of equity asset classes, multi-asset fixed income, and then into where we’ll see some additional interest, I would expect over a period of time, into digital assets, for example, private markets, and areas like that.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Got it. All right. I think we’ll just leave it there since we have only about a minute left. Thank you so much for being here, Martina, and looking forward to the invest today.

Martina Cheung, CEO, S&P Global: Great. Thank you so much.

Manav Patnaikan, Barclays’ Business and Information Services Analyst, Barclays: Thank you, guys.

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