John Wiley & Sons this week announced that it had cleared all financial and regulatory hurdles and finalized its acquisition of Blackwell Publishing for a hefty purchase price of £572 million ($1.1 billion). With the deal now done, Blackwell’s publishing program will now merge with Wiley’s global scientific, technical, and medical business, becoming the largest of Wiley’s three business divisions, which also include Professional/Trade and Higher Education publishing.
Combined, Wiley and Blackwell publish approximately 1250 scholarly peer-reviewed journals, and over one million total pages, as well as an extensive collection of books. William J. Pesce, Wiley’s president and CEO, announced that Eric A. Swanson, Wiley senior VP of STM, will lead the merged business, and Blackwell CEO Rene Olivieri will serve as its chief operating officer. Pesce said that the merger will allow the company to “benefit [from] more investment in online capabilities than either could as separate entities.”
Library Journal Academic Newswire, Feb. 8, 2007
Planned Merger of 2 Big Journal Publishers Worries Many Academic Librarians
The venerable publisher John Wiley & Sons will celebrate its bicentennial next year, and it has already given itself a present: In mid-November, the company made the surprise announcement that it would purchase Blackwell Publishing Ltd. for £572-million, or roughly $1.13-billion, an acquisition likely to have broad consequences for the world of academic journals and libraries.
Assuming that the deal is completed, Wiley’s scientific, technical, and medical division will henceforth be known as Wiley-Blackwell. That combined division will publish more than 1,200 scholarly journals, bringing the company within shouting distance of the giants Reed Elsevier (2,200 journals) and Springer (1,500). Taylor & Francis, which made unsuccessful overtures toward Blackwell in 2002, will drop to fourth place, with 1,050 journals.
Read the entire article: http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/12/2006120402n.htm
The Chronicle Daily News, 12/4/06
