Mcgraw-Hill's S&P Information Group Snags Merrill's Herrmann For Technology Post

McGraw-Hill Inc.'s Standard & Poor's Corp. has named Merrill Lynch & Co. staffer Cynthia Herrmann to fill a newly created position of vice president, technology planning, in its S&P Information Group. The move appears to signal a move by the group toward establishing technology development as a resource to be shared between the group's constituent data vendors.

The S&P Information Group comprises four units: MMS International; Commodity Information Services, which includes Platt's Energy Services; Equity Information Services, which includes S&P ComStock and S&P MarketScope; and the S&P Securities soft-dollar brokerage business.

Herrmann will report to S&P information group executive vice president Michael Hehir, beginning Aug. 17.

She is currently vice president in Merrill's reengineering group, reporting to Mike Norwich. According to Herrmann, the group's goal is "to look at all capital markets operations ... and the overall streamlining of all the processes" involved in those operations. Before that, she ran systems for institutional sales, and was involved in technologies supporting the firm's trading operations.

Herrmann says her responsibilities at S&P will be "pretty wide open." But, according to a prepared statement by Hehir, issued through a spokesperson, Herrmann "will be responsible for establishing and creating integrated systems development strategies for the S&P information group." Hehir declines to comment further.

Over the past several years, the group, headed by executive vice president Michael Hehir, has been attempting to cross- pollinate the market data services provided by its member vendors. The appointment of Herrmann may formalize that process by effectively creating an office of technology within the group.

Such a move would appear to mimic a recent reorganization at DJ/Telerate in which Dow Jones rearranged the corporate structure that supports its financial news services (IMD, April 13). In particular, DJ/Telerate created a centralized Resources division to oversee technology and news-gathering for two newly defined marketing divisions.

Like DJ/Telerate, S&P's information group has an array of financial information services with different markets and business goals -- but all requiring data collection and distribution technology. What's more, many of the S&P information group's products derive significant revenue from redistribution agreements with third-party data vendors.

While no such plan has been articulated at this point, the development of a single, independent delivery platform for the whole group could fall into Herrmann's future responsibilities.