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Houghton Mifflin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Houghton Mifflin 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 part of the Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep Group.
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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, 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 developers of such tests, including E.F. Lindquist. The company was the fourth-largest educational publisher in the United States in 1921. Today, the company has combined its assessment products within Riverside Publishing, including San Francisco-based Edusoft. Houghton Mifflin sold its professional testing unit Promissor to Pearson plc in 2006.
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 and Company, an educational publisher for secondary school materials, and D.C. Heath and Company, a publisher of supplemental educational materials. 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.
In 2001, Houghton Mifflin was acquired by French media giant Vivendi Universal. 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.
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 Partners and The Blackstone Group.[1] Tony Lucki, a former non-executive director of Riverdeep, will remain in his position as Houghton Mifflin's chief executive officer.[2] ,
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. This acquisition is pending regulatory approval.
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.
- Boston, Massachusetts (headquarters; School, College, and International divisions)
- New York, New York (Trade and Reference division)
- Wilmington, Massachusetts (Great Source Education Group)
- St. Charles, Illinois (College Faculty Services)
- Evanston, Illinois (McDougal Littell)
- Itasca, Illinois (Riverside Publishing)
- San Francisco, California (Edusoft)
- Indianapolis (East Side), Indiana (College)
- Indianapolis (West Side), Indiana (Trade)
- ^ "Irish company completes Houghton Mifflin acquisition", Associated Press, 22 December 2006.
- ^ Edgecliffe-Johnson, Andrew and Peter Smith. "Riverdeep in talks over $3.5bn takeover of Houghton Mifflin", Financial Times, 25 October 2006.