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overview
holdings
landmarks
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overview
This profile considers the Wolters Kluwer publishing group.
It covers -
introduction
Netherlands-based
Wolters Kluwer is a specialist publisher active in 25
countries, competing in particular with Elsevier
(a proposed merger with Elsevier was abandoned in 1998),
Springer Science+Business Media, Blackwell,
Thomson and Wiley.
Its corporate site is here.
As of 2001 it was responsible for over 700 journals and
23,000 book titles. Core activities were legal and tax
publishing, business publishing, medical/scientific publishing,
educational publishing/ professional training, trade publishing
for selected markets. It had sales of approximately US$2.5
billion and some 19,000 employees. Print products accounted
for around 70% of revenue. Sales
in 2005 were €3.4 billion, with 18,400 employees
worldwide
In 2002 Wolters Kluwer sold Kluwer Academic Publishers
for US$591 million to London-based private equity funds
Candover
and Cinven,
which subsequently acquired BertelsmannSpringer from Bertelsmann
for €1.05bn. The two funds announced plans to merge
Kluwer Academic Publishers and BertelsmannSpringer. That
merger was effected in late 2003 as Springer
Science + Business Media (unrelated to the Axel Springer
mass media conglomerate).
In March 2007 Wolters Kluwer announced an agreement to
sell its Education division to private equity group Bridgepoint
Capital for €774 million, with €475 million
of the net proceeds going to shareholders through a share
buy-back program. The agreement encompasses all of Wolters
Kluwer Education, with revenues of €316 million and
approximately 1,450 employees as of early 2007. The unit
had leading positions in primary, secondary and vocational
education in the Netherlands (Wolters-Noordhoff), Sweden
(Liber), the United Kingdom (Nelson Thornes), Germany
(Bildungsverlag EINS and digital spirit), Belgium (Wolters
Plantyn), Austria (Jugend & Volk) and Hungary (Muszaki
Kiadó).
Holdings
An indication of Kluwer units is here.
Studies
For Kluwer's history see Four windows of opportunity:
a study in publishing (Amsterdam: Wolters Kluwer 1995)
edited by Johan de Vries.
Lippincott is profiled in J. Stuart Freeman's Toward
a Third Century: An Informal History of the J.B. Lippincott
Company on the Occasion of its Two-Hundredth Anniversary
(Philadelphia: Lippincott 1992).
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