CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA—McGraw Hill Financial has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SNL Financial for $2.225 billion in cash. The locally-based company is privately-held by an affiliate of New Mountain Capital LLC. SNL provides data on several industries, including commercial real estate. Under this blockbuster transaction, it will join the ranks of complementary companies under McGraw's roof, a list that includes Standard & Poor's Ratings Services, the S&P Dow Jones Indices and Platts.

McGraw -- which transitioned out of traditional publishing two years ago to focus on financial data services -- pointed to how well SNL's services would fit into its current line up.

S&P Capital IQ's platform is strong in the areas of banking and insurance, while Platts is an energy market play. Presumable McGraw will want SNL to continue with its commercial real estate and REIT research -- a call by GlobeSt.com to the New York-based company was not returned in time for publication. McGraw did indicate that SNL's analytics will be used to enhance all of the company's services.

"We are enthusiastic about SNL because it is a fast-growing, highly complementary subscription-based business that will enable us to accelerate our strategy to be the leading provider of transparent and independent benchmarks, analytics, data and research across the global capital, commodity and corporate markets," said Douglas L. Peterson, president and CEO of McGraw Hill Financial, in a prepared statement.

The company views SNL as an opportunity to develop new services and enhance existing offerings, he said. It also expects to "expand into attractive adjacent markets," he said.

Parsing Prepared Statements

For the commercial real estate industry, the remainder of his statement could be a bit worrisome.

"Adding SNL to our portfolio creates a high-growth market data and analytics business that will leverage the power of the S&P Capital IQ and Platts global platforms to realize the full potential of SNL's financial and commodities products."

In other words, he doesn't single out real estate.

Of course real estate is, obviously, part of financial services, so this could easily be seen not as an omission but rather his way of keeping the statement brief.

It is notable that McGraw has identified approximately $70 million in synergies that are expected to be fully realized by 2019. These will come largely from operational efficiencies and McGraw Hill Financial's ability to accelerate SNL's international growth through its global footprint.

On Twitter at least, SNL's real estate arm is happy about the transaction. It tweeted:

A milestone day for SNL: We've agreed to partner with McGraw Hill Financial. Exciting growth and enhancements ahead! http://t.co/MZQDtYT1gL

— SNL Real Estate (@SNLRealEstate) July 27, 2015

Still, more information would be welcome to the industry. While it is unlikely that McGraw would phase out the CRE resources at SNL, it is conceivable that the data SNL generates in this space might not be publicly available anymore.

GlobeSt.com reached out to SNL for comment as well.

The deal's economic impact to McGraw Hill Financial will be partially offset by tax benefits that have an estimated present value of approximately $550 million.

McGraw Hill is expected to fund the transaction with approximately $525 million in cash and $1.7 billion in new debt.

UPDATE: SNL declined to comment to GlobeSt.com but did note a sentence in the press release that referenced SNL's real estate services and their complementary nature to other McGraw products. This sentence was not a quote but general language describing the acquisition.