Developments in the Industry:
Announcements from Publishers

07/20/04 – David Jastrow's PowerPoint presentation from CRIV's AALL panel discussion on trends in legal publishing is now available.

07/01/04 – Kluwer Academic Publishers and Springer-Verlag have merged, creating a new publishing house called Springer. source: http://www.wkap.nl/prod/a/FAQ-logo.pdf

06/28/04 – The Thomson Corporation and Information Holdings, Inc., a provider of intellectual property and regulatory information for the scientific, legal and corporate markets, announced today that they have signed a definitive merger agreement under which Thomson will acquire IHI. source: http://www.informationholdings.com/TOC_to_Acquire_IHI_6-28-04.pdf

05/10/04 – The merger between Taylor & Francis and Informa Group became effective today. The merged group has a new name: T&F Informa. source: http://www.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/pdf/merger/ClosingDate.pdf

04/12/04 - The Thomson Corporation today announced they have signed an asset purchase agreement under which Thomson Financial will acquire the Information Services division of the Banking and Investment Group of CGI, including the Starquote software solution. Starquote provides a full overview of the North American financial markets with news, information and real-time quotes on a single screen. The transaction is expected to close later in the second quarter. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. CGI is Canada’s largest independent information technology services firm and the fifth largest in North America. Source Thomson press release: http://www.thomson.com/corp/pressroom/pr_home.jsp

04/08/04 - The Thomson Corporation and privately held TradeWeb Group LLC announced that they have signed a definitive agreement under which Thomson will acquire TradeWeb, an online global trading platform for fixed-income securities. Thomson will purchase TradeWeb for $385 million in cash plus contingent payments of up to approximately $150 million over the next three years based on the achievement of growth targets. The transaction is expected to close later this quarter. Source Thomson press release: http://www.thomson.com/corp/pressroom/pr_home.jsp

01/26/04 – Findlaw, a Thomson business, today announced it has acquired Glasser LegalWorks, which will become part of Findlaw. Source: http://company.findlaw.com/pr/2004/012604.glasser.html

01/19/04 - Bill Pardue has announced that, after 7 years with LexisNexis, he is resigning as president and CEO of its Corporate & Federal Markets to take a new position with Gartner, Inc. Andy Prozes, CEO of LexisNexis Group, has named a replacement—Kurt Sanford, a 7-year veteran of LexisNexis, who has been CEO of LexisNexis Asia Pacific since August 2001. Sanford will be moving back to Dayton, Ohio from his present home in Singapore. Source: Information Today, at http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb040119-1.shtml

January 2004 – Taylor & Francis acquired Marcel Dekker and Swets & Zeitlinger Publishers. In the past year, they have also acquired CRC Press, Frank Cass, and Bios.

January 2004 -- Some management changes at West: Steve Buege has been appointed senior vice president of Operations. Mike Suchsland has been promoted to president and general manager of West Education Group. Both Buege and Suchsland will report to Mike Wilens, president and chief executive officer of West. Chris Parton has been promoted to director, Academic Segment Marketing for West. Kelly Darata has been promoted to director of Account Management; and Kurt Sames has been promoted to senior director, Practice Area Marketing and Development at West. Source: West Press Releases.

12/31/03 – Koninklijke Brill NV has acquired the Arab and Islamic Law publishing programme from Kluwer Law International. Works will be published under Brill's imprint Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Link: Press Release at http://www.brill.nl/showArticle.asp?article_ID=717

07/30/03 - South-Western, part of The Thomson Corporation, has announced the acquisition of Texere, a New York/London based publisher with a focus on finance, investment, economics, business technology, and management books. Texere, which itself had acquired Orion Business Books, was started in 2000 by Myles Thompson. Source: http://www.swcollege.com/whats_new.html

07/29/03 - The European Commission has given conditional permission for the sale of BertelsmannSpringer to the British firms of Candover and Cinven. The sale has been opposed by library groups, but Candover and Cinven have promised to divest BertelsmannSpringer's French medical publishing business. They will merge the new acquisition with their previous acquisition, Kluwer Academic Publisher, calling the new entity "Springer." This change will make them no 2 globally (behind Reed Elsevier) in academic publishing. Source: http://money.cnn.com/2003/07/29/news/international/bertelsmann.reut/

06/10/03 - Aspen Publishers, Inc., announced today that it has acquired Manual Industrial Property, a privately owned publisher based in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Manual Industrial Property's premier product, Manual for the Handling of Applications for Patents, Designs and Trademarks Throughout the World, more commonly known as "The Brown Book," is a comprehensive reference book on international intellectual property.

05/30/03 - The Information Access Alliance, a group of six library organizations, is urging the U.S. Department of Justice to block Cinven and Candover’s proposed purchase of BertelsmannSpringer. The Alliance is concerned that this transaction will bring about a reduction in access to critical research information. The Information Access Alliance, comprised of the American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Association of College and Research Libraries, Association of Research Libraries, Medical Library Association, and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), was created because of a shared concern about the effects of mergers among publishers of science journals and legal serial publications.

05/27/03 - Bertelsmann has announced the sale of its academic publishing group BertelsmannSpringer to the European private equity firms Candover and Cinven for about $1.23 billion. Once the sale is complete, the company will be merged with Kluwer Academic Publishers (KAP), the scholarly publisher acquired by Candover/Cinven for about $600 million. The combined group, which would be renamed Springer, would control 20% of the science market. [June 18 update: Reed Elsevier announced today that Mr. Derk Haank, a director of RE and chief executive of the science and medical division, is resigning from RE immediately and plans to take the post of chief executive of Springer.]

05/27/03 - Koninklijke Brill NV has today completed the acquisition of the Kluwer Law International publishing lists in the fields of Public International Law and Human Rights from Wolters Kluwer. The publications consist of over 1650 book titles, 17 journals and 5 loose-leaf publications The programme will continue under the imprint of Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Outside of North America, all Martinus Nijhoff law publications will continue to be distributed through Turpin. In North America (USA, Canada and Mexico), Brill will handle the distribution of these publications, details of which will be announced shortly.

05/09/03 - Thomson announced today that Gulf Acquisition Corp., an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Thomson formed solely for the purpose of acquiring shares of Elite Information Group, Inc., has completed its cash tender offer for all of the outstanding shares of common stock of Elite. Elite is a provider of integrated practice and financial management applications for legal and professional services markets. In a proposed second step of the acquisition, Thomson plans to merge Gulf Acquisition with and into Elite. 05/08/03 - Reed Elsevier announced that Lexi sNexis has entered into a definitive agreement to sell LexisNexis Document Solutions to Corporation Service Company.