McGraw Hill Financial Inc. is preparing to change its name to S&P Global Inc. later this year, a symbolic move that underscores the firm's shift away from its publishing roots.

The new name has received approval from McGraw Hill's board, and company officials will soon file a proposal seeking to amend the firm's moniker, Chief Executive Officer Douglas L. Peterson said in an interview. Shareholders will vote on the matter on April 27 at the company's annual meeting.

The move to drop the McGraws from the company's name for the first time in its 128-year history follows decisions in recent years to spin off its education division and move the corporate headquarters from a midtown Manhattan skyscraper bearing the founder's name to a location downtown.

"The name of McGraw Hill, which is an absolutely fantastic brand, didn't necessarily fit the rest of the company," said Mr. Peterson, a former Citigroup Inc. executive who took over as CEO in 2013. "McGraw Hill is definitely seen as a publishing brand."

McGraw Hill is the parent company of Standard & Poor's Ratings Services, the world's largest ratings firm, as well as two other divisions with the S&P name—S&P Capital IQ and S&P Dow Jones Indices. It also operates a major commodities-pricing division.

Under Mr. Peterson, McGraw Hill has repositioned itself as a global data analytics firm. The company bought financial-data provider SNL Financial LC last year for $2.2 billion and said it was exploring a strategic review of its J.D. Power division, best known for customer-satisfaction surveys.

The Wall Street Journal reported early last year that senior executives and employees were having informal discussions about changing the McGraw Hill name. Harold "Terry" McGraw III, the great-grandson of the company's founder and a former CEO of the company, relinquished his chairmanship of McGraw Hill last year.

Mr. Peterson said the name change has the support of all board members, as well as Mr. McGraw, who is chairman emeritus. Interest in calling the firm S&P Global picked up over the past nine months, Mr. Peterson said.

In 1966, McGraw Hill purchased S&P, a company that produced bond evaluations, and whose own origins date back to 1860, according to the company's website.

McGraw Hill also reported its fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday. The copany swung to a fourth-quarter profit of $248 million, or 91 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $846 million, or $3.11 a share. Excluding restructuring- and acquisition-related expenses and other items, per-share earnings from continuing operations were $1.04. Revenue increased 7% to $1.37 billion. Excluding currency effects, the growth was 8%.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected adjusted profit of $1.01 a share and revenue of $1.38 billion.

For the year, McGraw Hill Financial forecast per-share earnings of $5 to $5.15 and revenue growth in the mid to high single digits on a percentage basis. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected per-share profit of $4.88 and revenue of $5.82 billion.

Write to Timothy W. Martin at timothy.martin@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 04, 2016 08:35 ET (13:35 GMT)

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