S&P Global announced the acquisition of With Intelligence from Motive Partners for $1.8 billion in cash, marking its largest private markets data play in a decade. The London-based firm tracks $7 trillion in alternative assets across 12,000 funds, delivering pre-trade analytics to allocators who currently rely on quarterly snapshots and consultant decks. The deal closes in Q2 2025, subject to regulatory clearance in the U.K. and European Union.

With Intelligence built its franchise on granular exposure data—fund-level holdings, manager track records, fee structures—that institutional buyers need before committing capital to multi-year lockups. The platform covers private equity, private credit, real estate, infrastructure, and hedge funds, with 400 institutional clients including sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, and endowments. S&P Global will fold the acquisition into its Market Intelligence division, which already serves 6,000 buy-side clients with public equity and fixed income data. The combined entity will index private market performance alongside public benchmarks, a capability that matters when allocators build 60/40 portfolios with 20% alternative sleeves.

The timing reflects structural demand. U.S. public pension funds now allocate an average 29% to alternatives, up from 11% in 2000, according to Cliffwater. They pay for lagged, self-reported valuations from general partners who mark their own books. With Intelligence offers third-party verification and peer comparison, which matters when a pension board asks why the real estate sleeve underperformed by 340 basis points. S&P Global gains the revenue model—subscriptions, not transaction fees—and the client relationships that feed its credit ratings and index businesses. A pension fund that uses With Intelligence for manager due diligence will also subscribe to S&P's creditworthiness assessments on the underlying portfolio companies. The deal also pre-empts Bloomberg and FactSet, both of which have acquired private markets data vendors in the past 18 months but lack With Intelligence's fund-level coverage.

The price reflects scarcity. Motive Partners acquired With Intelligence in a $425 million take-private in 2021, then scaled the platform across Europe and North America. The 4.2x return in under four years confirms that private markets infrastructure trades at venture multiples when the buyer is a listed incumbent defending its moat. S&P Global will finance the deal from cash on hand—it holds $2.1 billion in liquidity after the Kensho and IHS Markit integrations—and expects no dilution to 2025 earnings.

Watch for client migration announcements in Q2 2025, when S&P Global begins cross-selling Market Intelligence subscriptions to With Intelligence's 400 institutional accounts. The European Commission's review will focus on data concentration in credit markets, where S&P Global already holds a 44% share of the ratings oligopoly. If Brussels imposes behavioral remedies, S&P Global will firewall the private markets data from its ratings committees, which adds compliance cost but preserves the deal logic. The real test is whether Blackstone, KKR, and Apollo—who control $2.5 trillion in client capital—will feed portfolio company data into an S&P-owned platform that their LP's use to evaluate performance.

The deal confirms that private markets are now too large to remain opaque. When $14 trillion in illiquid assets sit on institutional balance sheets, the infrastructure to price and compare them becomes as valuable as the positions themselves.