Expand Your Perspective: Private Markets Q&A

Build a 360-degree view of the private markets with insights, data, software, and tools from S&P Global and IHS Markit. In the next installment of the Expand Your Perspective blog series, leaders from across the combined organization give their thoughts on how we are expanding perspectives through the private markets.

When you think about the future of the private markets — how can we help clients?

Sarah Cottle — Research, Advisory, and Specialty Solutions: 

Our combined solutions offer a 360-degree view of the private markets with data, services, and software that will support investors and fund managers at each step of the fund life cycle. 

Victor Eng — Private Market Solutions:

The Private Markets have seen tremendous growth over the last decade and that growth is projected to accelerate as investors continue increasing their allocations in search of outsized returns. General Partners need to put that money to work and drive value creation strategies to produce those returns. 

Andrew Eisen — Software Solutions:

Not only are the private markets growing in size, but they are also becoming more complex, making it even more critical that investors and fund managers have full transparency into their portfolios. Our data provides them with a trustworthy foundation and our software and services help them monitor portfolio companies and operate more efficiently. 

Brandon Newland — Private Markets Solutions:

With so much competition in the private markets, helping our clients differentiate themselves while giving them the tools they need to deliver outsized returns is paramount to their business. 

How will we partner with clients in this space to drive innovation?

Brandon Newland — Private Markets Solutions:

Client conversations are the life blood of our product roadmap and development. They help us remain vigilant on what to build, but more importantly how to build it. Some of the best ideas start with solving a small client query and building from there. 

As an example, there is increasing competition for interesting assets across the private markets. We are constantly working with clients on how to derive signals from our differentiated data to help them identify target companies at scale. Helping a client uncover potential opportunities first builds tremendous credibility and trust moving forward. 

Victor Eng — Private Market Solutions:

There's currently over $11 trillion in AUM in private market strategies, and record levels of dry powder are driving asset valuations higher and higher. These market dynamics make it increasingly important that we continue taking a client-first approach and deliver differentiated data and tools to help our clients identify attractive investment opportunities and monitor their portfolios.

While we have many clients who are further along in their digital transformations, general partners as a group have been slower to adopt feeds as a more efficient way of consuming data and deriving insights.  As these clients begin their journeys, we are here to help them by providing the flexible delivery channels and linking tools that will seamlessly connect our data, their data, and third-party data as well.

Andrew Eisen — Software Solutions:

Our software solutions grew out of the private equity industry, and we stay close to our clients to innovate where they need it most. Our work to improve data collection and processing is one example of this. Technology is going to transform the private markets in the next few years as we replace time-consuming manual methods of exchanging deal and investment information. Staying ahead of these advancements will require partnership and smart decision-making.

How do you think we are expanding perspectives across our new combined company?

Brandon Newland — Private Markets Solutions:

As we come together, the combination of unparalleled data, software, and services give us the ability to deliver end-to-end solutions to the private markets. This creates a massive opportunity to find the natural inflection points between our products to derive significant value for our clients.

Andrew Eisen — Software Solutions:

The combination of our two companies’ data capabilities is going to bring investors a new perspective on how they can invest across private assets. Bringing together portfolio-level information with a macro view of the market will unleash huge opportunity.

Victor Eng — Private Market Solutions:

The S&P Global and IHS Markit combination brings together a full suite of capabilities to actively monitor capital flows. This space is famously opaque and lacking in transparency so this holistic picture will unlock huge opportunity for our clients.