By Diane Bartz
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Business information provider S&P Global Inc and IHS Markit Ltd have won U.S. antitrust approval for their planned merger, on condition it sell some businesses and scrap a non-compete agreement with GasBuddy, the Justice Department said in a statement.
The $44 billion deal was initially announced in November 2020.
To win approval for the deal, the companies agreed to sell three of IHS Markit’s price reporting agency businesses. The department said the businesses are: Oil Price Information Services (OPIS); Coals, Metals, and Mining (CMM); and PetrochemWire (PCW).
The businesses will be bought by News Corp under a $1.15 billion deal reached in August.
The department also required OPIS to scrap a 20-year non-compete agreement that it had with GasBuddy, which uses crowdsourced information to help people find deals on retail gasoline. The agreement has stopped GasBuddy from creating a service to compete with OPIS, the department said.
“The divestitures will preserve competition for PRA (price reporting agency) services, which are vital to the proper functioning of commodity markets and promote transparency in the financial markets,” Richard Powers, acting head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, said in a statement.
The deal won EU antitrust approval in October, with some of the same conditions.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz; editing by Diane Craft, Chris Reese and Jonathan Oatis)
