Financial information provider SNL Financial, Charlottesville, Va., has moved into the metals and mining sector by acquiring Metals Economics Group, Halifax, Nova Scotia. The acquisition makes metals and mining the fifth vertical market for SNL and is the company’s first such expansion since 2007.
MEG has more than 30 years of asset-level information and data history in the metals and mining sector and currently covers thousands of global mining projects from early exploration through production, providing detailed company and asset-level data.
The new SNL division is taking the name SNL Metals Economics Group, executives said. They added that the project and company information as well as existing in-depth research studies and services along with MEG’s annual Corporate Exploration Strategies report on worldwide mining company exploration budgets by company, commodity and geography, are to be integrated with and made available though SNL’s online product platform.
SNL Metals Economics is scheduled to complete detailed coverage of all major minerals projects by adding manganese and bauxite in the coming year.
“We’re thrilled to enter the metals and mining market via the acquisition of MEG, a company that shares our core values around data quality and deep subject matter expertise,” Mike Chinn, SNL president and CEO, said in a statement Wednesday.
“While this is SNL’s largest acquisition to date, we see MEG as simply the starting point for our investment in the metals and mining sector. We intend to expand MEG’s already excellent project coverage by adding content consistent with SNL’s ‘single source’ information platform philosophy for our clients.”
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. “We are excited by the rich opportunities presented by SNL to quickly improve our functionality and the depth and breadth of our coverage,” said Michael Chender, founder and CEO of MEG. “We are delighted that our clients will also benefit from SNL’s dedication to the highest standards of quality, accuracy, and customer support.”
SNL Financial previously provided financial information on more than 3,300 public companies and 50,000 private companies in business sectors that include banking, financial services, insurance, real estate, energy, media and communications.
Phil Burgert is managing editor of ResourceInvestor.com. He can be contacted at pburgert@resourceinvestor.com.