Moody's Acquires Barrie & Hibbert

Moody’s Corporation announced today that it has acquired Barrie & Hibbert Limited, a provider of risk management modeling tools for insurance companies. Moody’s anticipates that the acquisition will expand the footprint of Moody’s Analytics which, over the past few years, has served an accelerator for growth within the company.

Moody’s, NY, NY.,(NYSE: MCO) purchased the Edinburgh, Scotland based Barrie & Hibbert for $77.6 million which was funded with cash on hand. Taking into consideration the adverse impact of purchase accounting as well as integration costs, the transaction is anticipated to be several cents dilutive to Moody’s generally accepted accounting principles per share in 2012.

Moody’s expects that the acquisition will expand its suite of software solutions for the insurance and pension sectors when they begin to utilize Barrie & Hibbert’s Economic Scenario Generator (ESG), which is lauded as an industry staple for valuing and projecting assets and liabilities as well as assessing risk and capital positions. However, it is not just the ESG that Moody’s views will help perpetuate the growth of its analytics business. Barrie & Hibbert’s extensive knowledge of the intricacies involved in the risks of long-term asset liability management will play a major role.