Swets Blackwell Completion (Michael Markwith) Marcia Tuttle 10 Mar 2000 14:18 UTC
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 09:11:24 -0500 From: Michael Markwith <MMarkwith@swetsinc.com> Subject: Swets Blackwell Completion Press Release Lisse, March 9th, 2000 Joint Venture of Swets Blackwell now complete. The boards of Blackwell Limited and Swets & Zeitlinger are delighted to announce that the merger between Blackwell's Information Services and Swets Subscription Service has now been completed. This follows the signing of the merger agreement November 30, 1999, to create a joint venture combining the two companies. After due diligence and tax and regulatory processes, the recent approval of the Office of Fair Trade in the United Kingdom has made completion possible. This merger is between the subscription agency and information service divisions of Blackwell Limited and Swets & Zeitlinger. The new company with a head office based in The Netherlands is called Swets Blackwell. Swets & Zeitlinger and Blackwell Limited are both shareholders in the new company, with Swets being the majority shareholder. Blackwell Ltd retains its library bookselling division, Blackwell's Book Services, and its UK retail bookselling operation, Blackwell Retail Ltd outside the joint venture while Swets & Zeitlinger retains its publishing, document services, psychological tests and publishers' services divisions as separate entities. Work is well underway on the structure of the new company; the integration of personnel, offices and systems and the rationalisation of the company's services and products. The overall integration of all systems and offices will be completed by 2001 with the majority of the systems being fully integrated during 2000. Swets Blackwell is the leading global subscription agent and information services company with a turnover in excess of one billion US Dollars. Its offices are in 19 countries with a total staff of over 1000. The company provides a complete range of services to libraries, scholars and publishers in the area of print and electronic journal provision and management. The unique services that both Swets and Blackwell's have developed in recent years to provide access to full text electronic journals, databases and contents information are being integrated and will be re-launched later this year. Journal publishing and distribution are undergoing fundamental changes because of the impact of the Internet. The joint venture agreement is a result of the recognition by both companies that their combined skills and expertise place the new company, Swets Blackwell, in a unique position to meet the evolving needs of customers and publishers. Notes for editors: Blackwell's Information Services, a division of Blackwell Limited, has been in the library supply and information delivery business for over 90 years, serving academic, medical, corporate and government library markets. It has offices in Oxford, New York, New Jersey, Sydney, Taiwan, Brazil, Korea, South Africa and Singapore. Related companies include Blackwell Retail Ltd. (84 UK bookshops), Blackwell's Books Services (global library supply of books) and two publishing companies: Blackwell Science and Blackwell Publishing. Swets Subscription Service is a division of Swets & Zeitlinger, an international company heavily involved in all developments within the area of electronic publishing and the distribution of scientific and professional information. Swets Subscription Service has offices in 18 countries and handles subscriptions for some 200,000 titles from more than 50,000 publishers worldwide. Increasing numbers of titles are now electronic-based or delivered via the Internet. Other divisions within Swets and Zeitlinger are Swets Backsets Service (backsets and reprints of scholarly journals), Swets Document Systems (data conversion), Swets Test Publishers (development and publishing of psychological tests), Swets & Zeitlinger Publishers (scholarly journal and book publishers). Swets & Zeitlinger has over 800 employees. For further information please contact: Bart de Gans, Communications Manager Swets & Zeitlinger BV, tel +31 252 435388, email bdegans@swets.nl