McGraw Hill Financial

McGraw Hill Financial, Inc. is an American publicly traded corporation headquartered in New York City. Its primary areas of business are financial information and analytics. It is the parent company of Standard & Poor's Ratings Services, S&P Capital IQ, Platts, J.D. Power and Associates, and is the majority owner of the S&P Dow Jones Indices joint venture.

Corporate history

The predecessor companies of McGraw Hill Financial have history dating to 1888, when James H. McGraw purchased the American Journal of Railway Appliances. He continued to add further publications, eventually establishing The McGraw Publishing Company in 1899. John A. Hill had also produced several technical and trade publications and in 1902 formed his own business, The Hill Publishing Company. In 1909 both men, having known each other's interests, agreed upon an alliance and combined the book departments of their publishing companies into The McGraw-Hill Book Company. John Hill served as President, with James McGraw as Vice-President. In 1917, the remaining parts of each business were merged into The McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, Inc. In 1986, McGraw-Hill bought out competitor The Economy Company, then the United States' largest publisher of educational material. The buyout made McGraw-Hill the largest educational publisher in the United States.

McGraw-Hill Education

McGraw-Hill Education (MHE) is a learning science company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that provides customized educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also provides reference and trade publications for the medical, business, and engineering professions. McGraw-Hill Education currently operates in 44 countries, has more than 6,000 employees globally, and offers products and services in 60 languages.

Formerly a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, McGraw-Hill Education was divested from McGraw Hill Financial and acquired by Apollo Global Management in March 2013 for $2.5 billion in cash.

Based on the growing demand for classroom technology, McGraw-Hill Education is transitioning from a print-based business model to customized content sold through subscriptions. This shift has accelerated in recent years with an increased focus on developing adaptive learning systems that enable classroom teaching to come closer to a one-to-one student-teacher interaction. These systems allow personalized learning by assessing each student's skill level and using data to determine how each can progress through lessons most effectively. McGraw-Hill Education provides digital products and services to over 11 million users. In 2013, the company acquired the ALEKS Corporation and after acquiring 20 percent equity stake in Area9 Aps went on to acquire the company, its development partner on the LearnSmart Advantage suite. MHE also opened a new R&D office in Boston’s innovation district.