Harcourt General to Acquire Churchill Livingstone

Posted on August 15, 1997

Harcourt General, Inc. announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Churchill Livingstone, one of Europe's leading English-language health sciences publishers, from Pearson plc, for approximately $92.5 million in cash.

Churchill Livingstone is headquartered in New York and Edinburgh and maintains offices in London; San Francisco; Secaucus, N.J.; and Melbourne, Australia. It has annual revenues of approximately $50 million, primarily from medical education and nursing materials. The company was founded in 1821 and publishes more than 1,500 book and CD-ROM titles and 70 journals, including its well-known medical textbook, Gray's Anatomy, which was first published in 1858 and currently is in its 38th edition. More than 60 percent of Churchill Livingstone's revenues come from outside the United States.

Harcourt General is already a major medical publisher through its W. B. Saunders publishing unit. The Company also owns Harcourt Brace de Espana S.A., a leading Spanish-language publisher of medical books headquartered in Spain, and has the exclusive rights in most countries outside the United States to market and sell English-language professional medical publications produced by Mosby-Year Book, a medical publisher owned by The Times Mirror Company.

Richard A. Smith, chairman and chief executive officer of Harcourt General, said, "The addition of Churchill Livingstone to our existing professional publishing businesses is a significant strategic move that makes us one of the largest publishers of medical and health-related books and journals throughout the world. Our international presence, in particular, is further strengthened with the addition of the Churchill Livingstone imprint. With the synergies which we believe are available with our existing medical publishing businesses, we expect Churchill Livingstone to contribute to earnings in its first full year."

Closing of the acquisition is subject to regulatory review in the U.S. and the U.K. Harcourt General hopes to complete the acquisition before the end of the Company's fiscal year on October 31, 1997. Harcourt General, Inc. is a growth-oriented operating company with core businesses in publishing and specialty retailing.