S&P buys Goldman's commodity index

Standard & Poor's, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, will acquire the market-leading Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI) and two equity index families from the Goldman Sachs Group Inc, the two companies announced today.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The GSCI, created in 1991, currently includes 24 commodities and is designed to provide investors with a reliable and publicly available benchmark for investment performance in the commodity markets.

The clear commodity index leader, the GSCI has an estimated $60 billion in institutional investor funds tracking it, the majority of that coming through over-the-counter derivatives transactions.

After a brief transition period, the index will be renamed the S&P GSCI Commodity Index.

Under the terms of the agreement, Standard & Poor's will also acquire the Goldman Sachs Sector Indexes, diversified and broadly representative indexes for healthcare, financial institutions, utilities, consumer companies and cyclical industries; and, the Goldman Sachs Technology Index, a broad composite measure of US traded technology stocks and six technology sub-indexes.