This enhancement will provide RatingsDirect users with direct access to additional intelligence on more than 60,000 companies as well as advanced surveillance tools, alerting functionality, and added customization features, allowing for deeper market and risk assessment capabilities through a single source.

RatingsDirect provides a holistic view of fixed-income markets by combining Standard & Poor's credit ratings and research with additional performance benchmarks and risk indicators. Adding RatingsDirect to S&P Capital IQ's detailed company fundamental data, corporate profiles, SEC filings and enhanced analytic tools, such as advanced, multi-data point screening and charting, provides financial professionals with the breadth of information they need.

"The continuing and rapid pace of globalization, regulation and financial market volatility requires industry professionals to look for better and more efficient ways to monitor, measure and manage risk," said Sonia Kim, Managing Director, S&P Capital IQ. "RatingsDirect permits better tracking of market developments and provides access to deeper company information. This improvement now provides users with multiple data sets, including corporate trees, key developments, and timely market information. We have listened to our clients' concerns in gathering content from disparate sources and their desire for S&P Capital IQ to create an offering that would make that information-gathering process quicker and easier. Our future roadmap includes plans to add other ratings and research components, including coverage of public finance and structured finance."

"The addition of RatingsDirect to the S&P Capital IQ platform is a major milestone for both businesses, and a significant enhancement to the client experience," said Christian Dinwoodie, Executive Managing Director of Standard & Poor's Ratings Services. "We've listened to our clients and this collaboration is responding t to their needs."

Designed for efficient credit analysis and risk mitigation, RatingsDirect offers aggregated intelligence at the sector, sub-sector, industry and company level; and deep dives at the entity, instrument, deal, and security level. In addition, it also offers top news stories of the day; dynamic ratings distribution and ratings migration charts; early-warning signals from the Credit Default Swap (CDS) marketplace; and more. "Since our clients rely heavily on both the value of S&P Ratings and the coverage and timeliness of S&P Capital IQ content, adding RatingsDirect to this platform was a natural extension of our current offerings," concluded Sonia Kim.