The economics of conglomerates

Jessica Crispin reports:

McGraw-Hill Cos., the owner of the Standard & Poor’s
credit-rating service, won’t be publishing a book on the financial
crisis that the author says addresses S&P’s role in the markets’
plunge.

Barry Ritholtz, chief executive officer of equity-research firm
FusionIQ, said he withdrew the manuscript from the New York publisher
and plans to return his advance after the company tried to edit passages critical of S&P. McGraw-Hill says it wasn’t initially able to verify some of the book’s claims.

Addendum: Here is Barry's account.