Cengage Learning

Cengage Learning

Founded	2007
Country of origin	United States
Headquarters location	Boston
Key people	Michael Hansen — Chief Executive Officer Fernando Bleichmar – Chief Strategy Officer Alexander Broich – President, International Ken Carson – General Counsel Jim Donohue – Chief Product Officer Dean D. Durbin — Chief Financial Officer Sandi Kirshner – Chief Marketing Officer George Moore – Chief Technology Officer Kevin Stone – Chief Sales and Marketing Officer
Publication types	educational content, technology, and services
Imprints	4LTR Press Aplia Cengage Learning PTR Chilton ed2go Gale Milady MindTap National Geographic Learning
Revenue	US$1.5 billion (2014)
Owner(s)	Apax Partners, Searchlight Capital Partners, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Oaktree Capital Management, Oak Hill Advisors, BlackRock Financial Management, Franklin Mutual Advisers, and others
Number of employees	5,500 (2014)
Official website	www.cengage.com

Cengage Learning, Inc. is an educational content, technology, and services company for the higher education and K-12, professional and library markets worldwide. Cengage Learning has operations in more than 20 countries around the world.

Company information

The company is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and has approximately 5,500 employees worldwide across 20 countries. It was headquartered at its Stamford, Connecticut office until April 2014.

Gale is Cengage Learning's library reference arm and specializes in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses. The company creates and maintains databases that are published online, in print, as eBooks and in microform.

Services

Cengage Learning offers print and digital textbooks, instructor supplements, online reference databases, distance learning courses, test preparation materials, corporate training courses, career assessment tools, materials for specific academic disciplines, and custom solutions.

History

Cengage Learning, formerly Thomson Learning, which owned the Wadsworth Publishing imprint, was created out of a restructuring of International Thomson Publishing. It was announced on October 25, 2006, that Thomson Learning would be offered for sale by the Thomson Corporation, with an estimated value of up to US$5 billion. The company was bought by a private equity consortium consisting of Apax Partners and OMERS Capital Partners for US$7.75 billion, and the name was changed to Cengage Learning on 24 July 2007. In 2011, Cengage Learning acquired the National Geographic Society's school publishing unit to launch the National Geographic Learning brand. The global brand combined the former Cengage Learning ELT and National Geographic School Publishing imprints and sub-brands, under one unified identity.

In September 2013 David Shaffer retired from his role of chairman of the company, Shaffer had previously been executive vice president of The Thomson Corporation from 2005 to 2006, and then President and CEO of both Thomson Publishing International and Thomson Learning. The company had acquired a large amount of debt through the course of its initial buyout and subsequent acquisitions, and seen declining revenue through a shrinking market for paper text books. Cengage Learning filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 on July 2, 2013. Cengage Learning emerged from bankruptcy on April 1, 2014, eliminating approximately $4 billion of its funded debt and securing $1.75 billion in exit financing. Post bankruptcy, the company decided to focus on developing digital study guides and other educational supplements, as well as hard-copy text books. In January 2015 they announced expansion of their LearnLaunch Accelerator program, which provides seed funding and intensive coaching to promising startups, to the University of Chihuahua in Mexico.

Acquisitions

In addition to organic growth, Cengage Learning has expanded through acquisitions within the publishing industry. Notable acquisitions include:

Date of acquisition announced	Asset acquired	Industry
16 May 2008	PAL Publications	Professional reference series
2 June 2008	Houghton Mifflin College Division	Publishing for 2- and 4-year colleges
17 July 2008	Gatlin Education Services	Web-based training for education providers
16 December 2008	HighBeam Research	Paid search engine of newspapers and magazines
1 August 2011	National Geographic School Publishing	Publishing for K-12 Schools
September 2015	Learning Objects, Inc	Learning Management Systems and Adaptive Education Tools

Brands/imprints

The company's product lines include: 4LTR Press, Aplia, Cengage Learning PTR, Chilton, Education To Go, Gale, Milady, MindTap, and National Geographic Learning.

Rankings

In 2015, based on its 2014 revenues, Publishers Weekly ranked the company at number 11 out of 57 publishers worldwide. The list includes both trade and educational publishers.

References

• Mike W. Peng, Global Business (2009) p 3
• Hoover's Handbook of World Business 2011 (2011) p 355
• Press Release (Ed2go)
• Press Release (Houghton Mifflin)
• Association of American Publishers
• APAX Partners
• Boston Herald: Houghton Mifflin Acquisition

External links

• Official website
• Gale, part of Cengage Learning
• National Geographic Learning, part of Cengage Learning
• ed2go, a part of Cengage Learning
• CengageBrain.com
• Questia