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Houghton Mifflin
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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company (, ) is a leading educational publisher in the United States. The company's headquarters is located in Boston's Back Bay.
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Encyclopedia
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company (, ) is a leading educational publisher in the United States. The company's headquarters is located in Boston's Back Bay. It publishes textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers and adults, including the Best American series (annual collections of previously-published fiction and non-fiction).
The company is a subsidiary of Education Media and Publishing Group Limited formerly known as the Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep Group. The company was formerly known as Houghton Mifflin Company, changing its name following the 2007 acquisition of Harcourt Publishing.
History
Early history
In 1832, William Ticknor and James Thomas Fields had gathered an impressive list of writers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. The duo formed a close relationship with Riverside Press, a Boston printing company owned by Henry Oscar Houghton. Shortly after, Houghton also founded a publishing company with partner George Mifflin. In 1880, Ticknor and Fields and Houghton and Mifflin merged their operations, combining the literary works of writers with the expertise of a publisher and creating a new partnership named Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
Shortly thereafter the company established an Educational Department, and from 1891 to 1908 sales of educational materials increased by 500 percent. Soon after 1916, Houghton Mifflin became involved in publishing standardized tests and testing materials, working closely with such test developers as E.F. Lindquist. The company was the fourth-largest educational publisher in the United States in 1921.
In 1967, Houghton Mifflin became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol HTN. The company is currently privately held and no longer trades under this symbol.
During the 1990s, Houghton Mifflin acquired both McDougal Littell, an educational publisher of secondary school materials, and D.C. Heath and Company, a publisher of supplemental educational resources. In 1996, the company created their Great Source Education Group to combine the supplemental material product lines of their School Division and these two companies.
Vivendi and Private equity ownership
In 2001, Houghton Mifflin was acquired by French media giant Vivendi Universal for $2.2 billion including assumed debt. In 2002, facing mounting financial and legal pressures, Vivendi sold Houghton to private equity investors Thomas H. Lee Partners, Bain Capital, and The Blackstone Group for $1.66 billion, including assumed debt (approximately 25% less than Vivendi had paid a year earlier).
Riverdeep acquisition
On December 22, 2006, it was announced that Riverdeep PLC had completed its acquisition of Houghton Mifflin. The new joint enterprise would be called the Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep Group. Riverdeep paid $1.75 billion in cash and assumed $1.61 billion in debt from the private investment firms Thomas H. Lee Partners, Bain Capital and The Blackstone Group. Tony Lucki, a former non-executive director of Riverdeep, will remain in his position as Houghton Mifflin's chief executive officer.
Houghton Mifflin sold its professional testing unit, Promissor, to Pearson plc in 2006. The company has combined its remaining assessment products within Riverside Publishing, including San Francisco-based Edusoft.
Harcourt merger
On July 16, 2007 Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep announced that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire the Harcourt Education, Harcourt Trade and Greenwood-Heinemann divisions of Reed Elsevier for $4 billion. The expanded company would become Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
On December 3, 2007, Cengage Learning (formerly Thomson Learning) announced that it had agreed to acquire the assets of the Houghton Mifflin College Division for $750 million, pending regulatory approval.
On November 25, 2008, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced a temporary freeze on acquisition of new trade division titles, allegedly in response to the economic crisis of 2008. The publisher of the trade division resigned, apparently in protest. Many observers familiar with the publishing industry saw the move as a devastating blunder.
Locations
- Boston, Massachusetts (headquarters; School, College, and International divisions)
- Dublin, Ireland (Digital Research and Development)
- Evanston, Illinois (Holt McDougal)
- Indianapolis (East Side), Indiana (College)
- Indianapolis (West Side), Indiana (Trade)
- Itasca, Illinois (Riverside Publishing)
- New York, New York (Trade and Reference division)
- San Francisco, California (Edusoft)
- St. Charles, Illinois (College Faculty Services)
- Wilmington, Massachusetts (Great Source Education Group)
External links
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