Nature of Operations and Basis of Presentation

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2013

Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]

Nature of Operations and Basis of Presentation

Basis of Presentation

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (together with its consolidated subsidiaries, "McGraw-Hill," the “Company,” “we,” “us” or “our”) is a leading content and analytics provider serving the capital, commodities and commercial markets. The capital markets include asset managers, banks, exchanges, issuers and financial advisors; the commodities markets include producers, traders and intermediaries within energy, metals, and agriculture; and the commercial markets include professionals and corporate executives within automotive, construction, aerospace and defense and marketing / research information services.

Our operations consist of four reportable segments: Standard & Poor’s Ratings (“S&P Ratings”), S&P Capital IQ, S&P Dow Jones Indices ("S&P DJ Indices") and Commodities & Commercial Markets (“C&C”).

• S&P Ratings is a provider of credit ratings, offering investors and market participants with information and independent ratings benchmarks.

• S&P Capital IQ is a global provider of digital and traditional financial research and analytical tools, which integrate cross-asset analytics and desktop services.

• S&P DJ Indices is a global leading index provider that maintains a wide variety of valuation and index benchmarks for investment advisors, wealth managers and institutional investors.

• C&C consists of business-to-business companies specializing in commercial and commodities markets that deliver their customers access to high-value information, data, analytic services and pricing benchmarks.

We completed the sale of our McGraw-Hill Education business ("MHE") on March 22, 2013 and, accordingly, the results of operations of MHE have been reclassified to reflect the business as a discontinued operation for the three months ended March 31, 2013 and 2012. The assets and liabilities of MHE have been removed from the consolidated balance sheet as of March 31, 2013 and classified as held for sale as of December 31, 2012. See Note 2 —Acquisitions and Divestitures for further discussion.

The accompanying unaudited financial statements of the Company have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (“U.S. GAAP”) for interim financial information and with the instructions to Form 10-Q and Article 10 of Regulation S-X. Accordingly, they do not include all of the information and footnotes required by U.S. GAAP for complete financial statements. Therefore, the financial statements included herein should be read in conjunction with the financial statements and notes included in our Form 10-K, as amended, for the year ended December 31, 2012 (our “Form 10-K”).

In the opinion of management all normal recurring adjustments considered necessary for a fair statement of the results of the interim periods have been included. The operating results for the three months ended March 31, 2013 are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected for the full year. Certain prior-year amounts have been reclassified to conform to the current presentation.

Our critical accounting estimates are disclosed in Item 7, Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, in our Form 10-K. On an ongoing basis, we evaluate our estimates and assumptions, including those related to revenue recognition, allowance for doubtful accounts, valuation of long-lived assets, goodwill and other intangible assets, pension plans, incentive and stock-based compensation, income taxes, contingencies and redeemable noncontrolling interests. Since the date of our Form 10-K, there have been no material changes to our critical accounting policies and estimates.