Standard & Poor’s GICS History was created in response to clients’ requests for historical
company-level, Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS®) codes.
In conjunction with Standard & Poor's Compustat data or GICS Direct, Standard & Poor's GICS History is a valuable tool for statistical analysis, back-testing and historic sector performance attribution.
GICS History is available for over 24,500 active and inactive U.S. companies, Canadian companies, and ADRs.
The amount of history varies by company, depending on the availability of historical data at
Standard & Poor’s. The earliest start date for any company's history is June 1985.
Key data items include: Company name, Security Description, SEDOL, ISIN and/or ticker, CUSIP
(separate license required), GVKey, GICS classification codes with Effective From and Thru dates,
and Country codes
Distribution via file transfer protocol (FTP) and select third-party vendors on a daily and monthly basis with ASCII or XML formats available.
Standard & Poor’s and MSCI Barra, two leading providers of global
indices, jointly launched the GICS structure in 1999. The Global Industry Classification Standard was
developed to meet the global financial community’s need for one complete, consistent set of global sector
and industry definitions.
Analytic services and products provided by Standard & Poor’s are the result of separate activities designed to preserve the independence and objectivity of each analytic process. Standard & Poor’s has established policies and procedures to maintain the confidentiality of non-public information received during each analytic process.
