Standard & Poor's is springing back from its own bruising encounter with the credit shock and has an ever-busier financial market to thank for the revival in its fortunes.S&P cut staff by around 20 per cent in Australia at the height of the GFC, turning many long-serving analysts and managers out of the firm."Staff numbers are largely back to where they were pre-GFC," John Bailey, managing director for S&P in Australia, said in an interview.One driver of demand is the need for companies to refinance a wall of maturing debt. Estimates of the debt financing task for 2011 are in the order of $55 billion, along with the additional demand generated by mergers and acquisitions."We have experienced around a 10 to 15 per cent increase in new rating requests for corporate and financial institutions across Australia and New Zealand," Bailey said. "Many of these issuer names are new companies approaching the capital markets for the first time."Bailey cited the Santos hybrid - sold in two phases to a largely European investor base over the last two months - as an illustration of the trend."We have seen the market pick up recently. Issuance is up, with deals like Santos demonstrating a lot of pent up investor demand."Credit ratings revenue makes up around 70 per cent of S&P's income at present in Australia and Bailey said one goal was to diversify this through the firm's index and funds businesses.