Pearson plc is a British multinational publishing and

education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. ...

company headquartered in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, England. It was founded as a construction business in the 1840s but switched to publishing in the 1920s. Spender, J. A., ''Weetman Pearson: First Viscount Cowdray'' (London: Cassell and Company Limited, 1930). It is the largest education company and was once the largest book publisher in the world. In 2013 Pearson merged its

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.Bertelsmann. In 2015, the company announced a change to focus solely on education. Pearson plc owns one of the GCSE examining boards for the UK, Edexcel. Pearson has a primary listing on the

London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pa ...

and is a constituent of the

FTSE 100 Index The Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index, also called the FTSE 100 Index, FTSE 100, FTSE, or, informally, the "Footsie" , is a share index of the 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange with (in principle) the highest mar ...

. It has a secondary listing on the

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...

in the form of

American depositary receipt An American depositary receipt (ADR, and sometimes spelled ''depository'') is a negotiable security that represents securities of a foreign company and allows that company's shares to trade in the U.S. financial markets. Shares of many non-U.S ...

History

Construction business: 1844 to the 1920s

The company was founded by Samuel Pearson in 1844 as a building and engineering concern operating in Yorkshire under the name ''S. Pearson & Son''. In 1880, control passed to his grandson Weetman Dickinson Pearson (later 1st Viscount Cowdray), an engineer, who in 1890 moved the business to London and turned it into one of the world's largest construction companies. Another of its prominent engineers was Ernest William Moir who, after working for Pearson on tunnels in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

, became the contractor's agent on construction of the

Blackwall Tunnel The Blackwall Tunnel is a pair of road tunnels underneath the River Thames in east London, England, linking the London Borough of Tower Hamlets with the Royal Borough of Greenwich, and part of the A102 road. The northern portal lies just south ...

under the River Thames in London between 1892 and 1897. The company also built the Admiralty Harbour at

Dover Dover () is a town and major ferry port in Kent, South East England. It faces France across the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part of the English Channel at from Cap Gris Nez in France. It lies south-east of Canterbury and east of Maidstone ...

, the Halifax Dry Dock in Canada, the East River Railway Tunnels in

, the Mexican Grand Canal that drained

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley of ...

, the Tehuantepec Railway in

Mexico Mexico ( Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guate ...

, and railways and harbours around the world. In November 1915, the firm began construction of HM Factory, Gretna, the largest cordite factory in the UK during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

. In 1907 Weetman Pearson founded investment company Whitehall Securities Corporation Ltd which played an important role in the development of British airlines in the 1930s. The construction business was shut down in the 1920s. Its final projects included construction of the Silent Valley Reservoir in Northern Ireland (contract awarded in 1923), and completion of the Sennar Dam, in Sudan, in 1925."The Sennar Dam and the Gezira Irrigation Scheme",
The Engineer
'' (26 September 1924). Retrieved: 12 November 2015.

Publishing business: 1920s to 1990

In 1919, the firm acquired a 45% stake in the London branch of merchant bankers Lazard Brothers, an interest which was increased to 80% in 1932 during the depression years. Pearson continued to hold a 50% stake until 1999. In 1921, Pearson purchased a number of local daily and weekly newspapers in the United Kingdom, which it combined to form the Westminster Press group. In 1957, it bought the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nikke ...

'' and acquired a 50% stake in ''

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econ ...

''. It purchased the publisher

Longman Longman, also known as Pearson Longman, is a publisher, publishing company founded in London, England, in 1724 and is owned by Pearson PLC. Since 1968, Longman has been used primarily as an imprint by Pearson's Schools business. The Longman bra ...

in 1968. The company was first listed on the

in 1969. It bought the paperback publisher Penguin in 1970, and the children's imprint Ladybird Books in 1972. It bought a rival, the educational publisher Pitman Publishing, in 1985. In 1986, Pearson invested in the

British Satellite Broadcasting British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) was a television company, headquartered in London, that provided direct broadcast satellite television services to the United Kingdom. They started broadcasting on 25 March 1990. The company was merged wi ...

consortium, which, a few years later merged with Sky Television to form a new company, British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB).

1990 to 2000

During the 1990s, Pearson acquired a number of TV production and broadcasting assets (including former ITV franchisee Thames Television) and sold most of its non-media assets, under the leadership of future U.S. Congressman Bob Turner. Westminster Press was sold to

Newsquest Newsquest Media Group Ltd. is the second largest publisher of regional and local newspapers in the United Kingdom. It is owned by the American mass media holding company Gannett. It has 205 brands across the UK, publishing online and in print ...

in 1996. Pearson acquired the education division of

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News C ...

in 1996 from News Corporation and acquired book publishers Scott Foresman & Co. in 1996. In 1998 Pearson acquired Prentice Hall Textbooks/Simon & Schuster Trade Books from Viacom and merged it with its own education unit,

Addison-Wesley Addison-Wesley is an American publisher of textbooks and computer literature. It is an imprint of Pearson PLC, a global publishing and education company. In addition to publishing books, Addison-Wesley also distributes its technical titles throug ...

Longman to form

Pearson Education Pearson Education is a British-owned education publishing and assessment service to schools and corporations, as well for students directly. Pearson owns educational media brands including Addison–Wesley, Peachpit, Prentice Hall, eColleg ...

. Pearson sold several of the acquired divisions: first Appleton & Lange was divested to

McGraw-Hill McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes referen ...

and Master Data Central was sold to Master Data Center. Then, Jossey-Bass was sold to John Wiley & Son and the Bureau of Business Practice was sold to Wolters Kluwer. Subsequently, Macmillan Library Reference's children's imprints (Silver Burdett Press, Dillon Press, Crestwood House, Silver Press, New Discovery and Julian Messner) were closed. Then, Gale acquired Macmillan Library Reference (Charles Scribner's Sons Reference, Macmillan Reference, Thorndike Press, G.K. Hall, Twayne Publishers and Schirmer Books). Finally, IDG Books acquired Macmillan General Reference ( Frommer's, J.K. Lasser, Betty Crocker Cookbooks,

Weight Watchers Weight Watchers or WW may refer to: * Weight Watchers (diet), a comprehensive weight loss program and diet * WW International WW International, Inc., formerly Weight Watchers International, Inc., is a global company headquartered in the U.S. tha ...

Dieting and Cookbooks and Howell House Pet Books). In March 1994, Pearson acquired software publisher The Software Toolworks for , which was rebranded Mindscape. In March 1998, Pearson sold Mindscape to The Learning Company for . Pearson took a $346 million loss on the sale.

2000 to 2010

Pearson acquired

Dorling Kindersley Dorling Kindersley Limited (branded as DK) is a British multinational publishing company specialising in illustrated reference books for adults and children in 63 languages. It is part of Penguin Random House, a subsidiary of German media con ...

, the illustrated reference publisher and integrated it within Penguin, in March 2000 and then acquired National Computer Systems (NCS) in September 2000 so entering the educational assessment and school management systems market in the United States. In 2002, Pearson sold its 22% stake in RTL Group for €1.5 billion, and then purchased Rough Guides, the travel publisher, and brought it under Penguin. Pearson acquired Edexcel, a provider of qualifications in the UK, in 2003 and acquired about 80% stake in Meximerica Media Inc for $16.5 million for the swelling U.S. Hispanic market in 2004. Pearson purchased a series of other testing and assessment businesses, including Knowledge Technologies in 2004, AGS in 2005, and National Evaluation Systems and Promissor in 2006. Pearson acquired National Evaluation Systems, a provider of customised state assessments for teacher certification in the US, in April 2006 and announced that it had agreed to acquire Harcourt Assessment and Harcourt Education International from

Reed Elsevier RELX plc (pronounced "Rel-ex") is a British multinational information and analytics company headquartered in London, England. Its businesses provide scientific, technical and medical information and analytics; legal information and analytics; ...

for $950m in cash in May 2007. Pearson then completed the acquisition of Harcourt Assessment, merging the acquired businesses into Pearson Assessment & Information. Pearson also acquired eCollege, a digital learning technology group for $477m in May 2007. In February 2008, Pearson announced the sale of its Pearson Data Management Division (formerly the scanner manufacturing and servicing division of NCS Inc.) to Scantron Corporation (part of

M&F Worldwide M&F Worldwide Corp. is a privately held holding company based in New York City. It was incorporated in Delaware on June 1, 1988. Formerly Power Control Technologies, Inc., the company was previously a New York Stock Exchange listed public holding ...

) which had been its main competitor. Pearson acquired Wall Street English for $145m in 2009 and bought the school learning systems division of Sistema Educacional Brasileiro (SEB) for $497m in 2010. Also in 2010, Pearson sold its 61% stake in Interactive Data to investment funds managed by Silver Lake Partners and Warburg Pincus for $2 billion.

2010 to present

In July 2011, Pearson announced the creation of Pearson College, a British degree provider based in London. Also in 2011, Pearson acquired Connections Education and agreed to sell its 50% stake in FTSE International Limited to the London Stock Exchange for £450 million. In 2011, Pearson also increased its stake in TutorVista, such that it had a 76% stake, for $127 million. Pearson entered into talks with rival conglomerate Bertelsmann, over the possibility of combining their respective publishing companies,

Penguin Group Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a merger that was finalised on 1 July 2013, with Bertelsmann initial ...

and

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Ger ...

in October 2012. The houses are considered two of the "Big Six" publishing companies. On 29 October 2012, Pearson said it would merge Penguin Books with Bertelsmann's Random House to create the world's biggest consumer book publisher. Then in May 2012 Pearson announced its acquisition of GlobalEnglish Corporation, an American

Business English Business English is a part of English for specific purposes and can be considered a specialism within English language learning and teaching, or a variant of international English. Many non-native English speakers study the subject with the goal ...

software and solutions company, in an all-cash transaction. In May 2013, Pearson announced a new restructuring plan to invest in digital learning and emerging markets, after predicting weaker earnings. The change supports the decoupling of the Penguin consumer publishing business into a separate entity with Random House (forming Penguin Random House). The new structure combines the separate education companies, Pearson International and Pearson North America under one Pearson company. Pearson will organise around three global lines of business – School, Higher Education and Professional. The Financial Times Group and Pearson English will form part of Pearson Professional. In July 2014, the company announced it had cut 4,000 jobs, representing 10% of the company's workforce. Pearson announced on 23 July 2015 that it had agreed to sell the FT Group, which includes business daily ''

'', to Japanese media group

Nikkei Nikkei can refer to: *, abbreviated , Nikkei, a large media corporation in Japan *, abbreviated , Nikkei, a major business newspaper published in Japan *, a Japanese stock market index, published by ''Nihon Keizai Shimbun'' *, often simply ''Nikkei ...

for £844 million, or $1.32 billion. The sale does not include FT Group's London property at One Southwark Bridge. Pearson also retained the publishing rights to FT Press and licensed the trademark from Nikkei. In August 2015, Pearson's sold its 50% stake in ''

'' to the Agnelli family for £469 million who previously held 4.7% of the group. The remaining 50% of The Economist Group is owned by the Schroders, Cadburys and the

Rothschilds The Rothschild family ( , ) is a wealthy Ashkenazi Jewish family originally from Frankfurt that rose to prominence with Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744–1812), a court factor to the German Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel in the Free City of F ...

. On 5 November 2015, the company announced it was

rebranding Rebranding is a marketing strategy in which a new name, term, symbol, design, concept or combination thereof is created for an established brand with the intention of developing a new, differentiated identity in the minds of consumers, invest ...

, including the creation of a new logo, with a "100% focus" on education. On 3 July 2017, Pearson sold its Tutor Vista and Edurite lines of business to India-based education technology company, Byju's On 11 July 2017, Pearson agreed to reduce its holding in Penguin Random House to 25%, by selling a 22% stake in the business to Bertelsmann. In August 2017 Pearson announced that it would cut 3,000 staff in an effort to save £300 million annually. On 16 August 2017 Pearson sold the language training subsidiary Global Education to Chinese company Pu-Xin Education for £62 million. In November 2018 Pearson announced the launch of the Pearson Alumni Network. In 2019, Pearson sold its US K-12 business to the private equity firm Nexus Capital Management. Pearson also sold its remaining 25% stake in

Penguin Random House Penguin Random House LLC is an Anglo-American multinational conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, from the merger of Penguin Group and Random House. On April 2, 2020, Bertelsmann announced the completion of its purchase o ...

to Bertelsmann. Pearson CEO John Fallon retired from the company in 2020 and was succeeded by Andy Bird on 19 October 2020. In December 2021, Pearson announced that Omid Kordestani had been appointed as the Board's chair. His position became effective in March 2022. In April 2022, Pearson announced it had acquired the online language learning platform,

Mondly 'Mondly'' is a leading online language learning platform that enables over 100 million learners from 190 countries to learn 41 languages. Launched in 2014, it quickly became a household name in the mobile space, reaching the #1 position in Educat ...

Operations

Pearson has two main streams of business: * Global lines of business: focuses on the school, higher education and professional areas (includes textbooks and digital technologies for teachers and students). Pearson's school brands include BTEC, Bug Club, Edexcel, Fronter, GradPoint, Schoolnet, and SuccessNet. Pearson's higher education brands include eCollege, Mastering/MyLabs, Revel, online tutoring ( Smarthinking), and Financial Times Publishing. * Geographic streams: focuses on North American market, growth markets and core markets.

Pearson in Practice

Pearson in Practice Technology, formerly Zenos IT Academy, was only part of Pearson in Practice and was an institute offering government-funded apprenticeships for learners aged 16 to 24, and paid learning for people outside those boundaries. It focuses on giving its candidates the ability to sit

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

exams after an intense learning program that lasts for 12 months. Learners explored the full boundaries of computing, by looking at advanced server technology,

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...

knowledge,

group policies Group Policy is a feature of the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems (including Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server 2003+) that controls the working environment of user accounts and computer accounts. G ...

and various other sections related to networks and computers. According to an Ofsted report in 2012, the graduation rate for the Zenos organization was higher than the average college percentages, and lay at 90%. Pearson announced plans to exit Pearson in Practice on 7 January 2013, although learners already signed up will be supported until the end of their courses. In February 2013 it was transferred to Vision Workforce Skills.

Pearson VUE

Pearson VUE is an electronic testing company, owned by Pearson PLC. Founded in 1994 by E. Clarke Porter as Virtual University Enterprises, the company now operates in 165 countries with more than 5,000 authorized test centers. Pearson VUE co-sponsored the 10th Annual International Conference on Medical Regulation, which took place at the Ottawa Convention Centre in

Ontario, Canada Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

in October 2012.

Criticism

Concerns exist around the amount of influence Pearson, being a commercial company, has on public education. Other concerns are around tax avoidance, high value contracts, and in one instance, laying off teachers to offset the high costs of testing. In 2017, more than six out of ten Pearson's shareholders voted against the chief executive's pay package of £1.5m after the company made a record loss. Pearson US has been criticised for using offshore

tax avoidance Tax avoidance is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisd ...

schemes involving a host of companies at a service address in

Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small land ...

. In the United Kingdom, Pearson owns Edexcel, an education and examination board. Edexcel has produced qualifications which link to Pearson texts, although Edexcel also continues to endorse textbooks published by other companies. Edexcel has also faced criticism over repeated leaks of exam material in consecutive years; police investigations into some of the incidents were referred to prosecutors. In June 2010, Pearson plc received notification that the

Libyan Investment Authority The Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) (المؤسسة الليبية للاستثمار) is a government-managed sovereign wealth fund and holding company headquartered in Tripoli, Libya. It was established on August 28, 2006, by Decree 208 of t ...

(LIA) founded by

Muammar Gaddafi Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, . Due to the lack of standardization of transcribing written and regionally pronounced Arabic, Gaddafi's name has been romanized in various ways. A 1986 column by '' The Straight Dope'' lists 32 spelli ...

's son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi as a sovereign fund, had acquired 24,431,000 shares within the company via Euroclear. On further investigation, Pearson said the LIA may have acquired an additional 2,141,179 shares, resulting in a total interest of 26,572,179 shares. At the time, this represented a major holding of 3.27% within the company and the investment was worth around £280 million.

References

External links

* *
List of Pearson-owned companies
from the '' Columbia Journalism Review'' * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pearson plc 1844 establishments in England British brands British companies established in 1844 Companies listed on the London Stock Exchange Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange Construction and civil engineering companies established in 1844 Education companies established in 1844 Mass media companies established in 1844 Mass media companies of the United Kingdom Multinational companies headquartered in England Multinational publishing companies Pan-European media companies Publishing companies established in 1844