S&P gains control of Crisil

Global ratings firm Standard & Poor's (S&P) today said it has no plans to increase its stake in Crisil beyond the 58.5 per cent that it obtained in the open offer.

S&P's parent The McGraw-Hill Companies acquired an additional 49.07 per cent stake in Crisil for Rs 241.87 crore in the open offer which closed on April 26.

"S&P has achieved its objective of gaining majority control of Crisil, after a long and successful relationship. There are no plans to further raise the stake," S&P president Kathleen A Corbet said.

Stock broker Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, who tendered about 5.2 per cent Crisil shares in the S&P open offer, is the single largest shareholder along with his wife with a stake of about 9 per cent.

Unit Trust of India (UTI) and the Specified Undertaking of UTI have the next largest combined holding of 8.43 per cent.

The S&P chief said the global ratings firm has neither have any specific plan to change the structure of Crisil board after becoming the majority owner and nor does it want to rename Crisil.

Crisil has 12 members on the board, of which are whole-time directors. Edward Emmer, S&P's executive managing director, corporate and government services group, is on the board of Crisil, but not as a nominee of the US-based company.

Crisil has now become a part of S&P's Asia-Pacific network and would be functioning jointly for a whole range of activities including ratings and regional research.

The acquisition has, however, caused overlapping of business interests, the glaring one being Crisil's London-based EconoMatters Ltd, a gas advisory and information company. S&P also has a gas information company called Platts.

Crisil managing director and CEO, R Ravimohan, said the operations of EconoMatters and Platts overlap. The only difference is EconoMatters also offers consulting services. On acquiring EconoMatters in December 2003, Crisil had positioned itself to become a global leader in gas advisory and information.

Corbet said the process of integrating Crisil's operations with S&P has just begun, and the specifics would be decided over time.

She, however, stated that S&P will continue to back Crisil's ambitions to expand in the emerging markets. Crisil already has a stake in the 19-country Caribbean Information and Credit Rating Services Ltd.

Crisil hopes the leveraging of S&P brand will accelerate its overseas plans and also provide it the power to charge higher prices for its products and services. In India, Crisil has not raised its prices for several years now.

S&P now also plans to outsource more data and analytics work from Crisil. Of the 560 staff of Crisil, about 100 are deployed on projects outsourced by S&P.