Financial services, publishing to be focus areas for McGraw-Hill

The McGraw-Hill Companies is looking to ramp up its presence in the Indian financial and publishing space to increase the share of revenue from the country from the present level of 5 per cent, the group’s Chairman, President & CEO, Harold McGraw III, has said.

McGraw told reporters that in the financial services market, there was potential to strengthen its suite of offerings and that it could look at investment vehicles, index management and tools that help in data management and distribution.

In case of publishing, the digital tools aimed at fostering traditional and vocational education would be the focus areas, McGraw said on the sidelines of a press conference organised by rating agency Crisil to announce that it had completed rating of 10,000 small and medium enterprises.

Rating agency Standard & Poor’s, a McGraw-Hill company, is a majority shareholder in Crisil. McGraw said his company would like to increase its stake beyond the present level of 51.5 per cent.

Asked about the recent report of the high-level committee, Crisil Managing Director and CEO Roopa Kudva said the shareholding was fairly diversified. She added that Crisil was already the suggested disclosures.

The McGraw-Hill Companies had sales of the order of $5.95 billion in 2009. Apart from S&P and McGraw-Hill Education, the group’s other companies such as JD Power also have a presence in India.