Standard and Poor's (S&P) is an American financial intelligence company and a division of S&P Global. It is a market-leading institution that provides financial market analysis, credit ratings, and benchmark indices. The company's origins trace back to 1860 when Henry Varnum Poor published History of Railroads and Canals in the United States, which provided comprehensive financial and operational data on U.S. railroad companies, solving the problem of a lack of transparent financial information for investors. The Standard Statistics Company was founded in 1906 to provide financial information on non-railroad companies. The modern entity, Standard & Poor's, was formed in 1941 through the merger of Poor's Publishing and the Standard Statistics Bureau.
S&P operates primarily through two key mechanisms: credit ratings and market indices. As one of the "Big Three" credit-rating agencies, S&P Global Ratings provides objective opinions on the creditworthiness of companies, countries, and debt instruments. Its long-term credit rating scale ranges from AAA (best quality) to D (in payment default), with intermediate ratings like BBB+ or BBB- offered between AA and CCC. The ratings express a forward-looking opinion about the relative likelihood of default. S&P also creates and maintains widely used investment benchmarks, such as the S&P 500 index, which tracks the stock performance of 500 large-cap U.S. companies. The S&P 500 is a capitalization-weighted index and is a subset of the S&P 1500.
S&P connects to the broader global financial system, particularly through its competitors, the other two major credit rating agencies, Moody's Ratings and Fitch Ratings. The parent company, The McGraw-Hill Companies, acquired Standard & Poor's Corporation in 1966 and later rebranded to S&P Global in 2016. Recent changes include S&P Global's evolution of its Market Intelligence operating model and the announcement of an acquisition of a majority stake in Agusto & Company Limited in 2026 to expand its ratings presence in Africa. The core functions of providing credit ratings and market indices have remained the same.