S&P/Dow Jones Joint Venture

In June 2012, the Department of Justice closed with no divestitures its investigation into the proposed joint venture combining CME Group’s Dow Jones index business and McGraw Hill’s Standard & Poor’s index business. The parties retained Compass Lexecon expert, Professor Robert Willig to analyze the competitive effects of the transaction. Professor Willig’s analysis showed that the flagship equity and commodity indexes provided by Dow Jones and S&P did not closely compete with each other, and that there were numerous other dynamic providers of financial index services. Professor Willig was supported by a team headed by Tom Stemwedel in our Chicago office. CME was represented by Ben Crisman and John Lyons of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, and McGraw Hill was represented by Joseph Larson of Wachtell, Litpon, Rosen & Katz.