The 2016 Tech 50: Mike Chinn

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Mike Chinn
President
S&P Global Market Intelligence
PNR

Effective April 27, McGraw Hill Financial became S&P Global, and business units of the $5.3 billion-in-revenue data company, which is particularly well known for its indexes and rating services, fell into line with the new branding. One group, S&P Global Market Intelligence, had a more involved storyline, however. Last September, New York–based McGraw Hill acquired privately held financial data and analytics firm SNL Financial for $2.2 billion. SNL was combined with S&P Capital IQ to create a $1.4 billion business led by SNL president and CEO Mike Chinn. Founded in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1987, SNL brought “deep, unique, often proprietary, industry-specific data” in several sectors, including energy, financial, media and real estate, says Chinn, who oversaw 3,300 people at SNL and now has a global workforce exceeding 10,500. As part of S&P, SNL extends its reach — Chinn refers to “richer content and applications across geographies” and “unparalleled depth and breadth of offerings” — and cross-selling potential. He describes the product set as primarily off-trading-floor data and analytics for the likes of investment bankers, researchers, portfolio managers and a growing “off–Wall Street,” or nonfinancial corporate, clientele. Although delivery of this data does not have to keep pace with low-latency trading requirements, “demand for real-time data is increasing in certain customer segments,” says Chinn, 44, who went to work for SNL as a bank M&A analyst in 1994 after earning a bachelor’s degree in economics and history from the University of Virginia. He rose to president in 2000 and CEO in 2010; as president of S&P Global Market Intelligence, he remains based in Charlottesville. Chinn says his organization is making “significant investments in data science and machine learning. This is still a human-intensive business, and with content flowing in from thousands of sources around the clock, people can be a lot more productive with tools like intelligent filtering.” He adds, “It changes the nature of analysis when asking creative questions — not just analytical horsepower — can result in competitive advantage.” Also in the offing: desktop product upgrades, advanced credit and risk analytics, and improved user interfaces employing the HTML5 browser standard, which, because it works across multiple platforms and types of devices, “enhances the efficiency of the engineering effort.”

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The 2016 Tech 50