From: "Hamaker, Charles" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 13:59:51 +0000 Penguin was owned by Pearson. Penguin and Random House owned by Bertelsmann. They merged in 2013. From Wikipedia: "Penguin Random House markets itself as "the world's first truly global trade book" publisher. It was formed on July 1, 2013, upon the completion of an agreement between Bertelsmann and Pearson to merge their respective trade publishing companies, Random House and Penguin, with the parent companies owning 53% and 47%, respectively" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_Random_House Bloomberg reported last October: "Bertelsmann, owner of 53 percent of the New York-based business, plans to buy part or all of the 47 percent held by Pearson Plc, the people said, asking not to be named discussing private deliberations. While Bertelsmann and Pearson aren’t in talks, Pearson is willing to sell and can do so starting October 2015 under a shareholder agreement, the people said." http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-07/bertelsmann-said-to-plan-increasing-penguin-random-house-stake I found the article referred to very informative. I'm particularly concerned about the vast amount of individual student data that Pearson and other companies like Cengage collect from students logging into their systems and what the click through licenses subject students and even faculty to in terms of indemnifications and venues. Regards Chuck Hamaker Charles Hamaker Associate University Librarian Collection Development and Electronic Resources J. Murrey Atkins Library [log in to unmask] | http://library.uncc.edu -----Original Message----- From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 22:11:06 -0500 I don't want to defend Pearson, but surely that article in Politico could have been fact-checked. A good place to begin would have been by using Pearson's own Financial Times or its half-interest in the Economist. Such an investigation would have revealed that Pearson is not the owner of Penguin Random House (that must have come as a shock to Bertelsmann) and that the statement of how Pearson really got going in the U.S. is simply wrong, as the acquisition of the U.S.'s largest and most profitable textbook publisher, Prentice-Hall, was already completed. I am sure there are a bunch of bad guys at Pearson. But what is Politico's defense? Joe Esposito On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 9:02 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > From: Bernie Reilly <[log in to unmask]> > Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 01:35:16 +0000 > > The in-depth report on the British publishing giant Pearson in today’s > Politico (“No profit left behind”) > > http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson-education-115026.html?hp > =r1_4 > > is a timely sequel to a recent New Yorker piece on Jeb Bush’s links to > the for-profit education industry. One Pearson executive recently > claimed that Pearson is the largest aggregator of student information. > > Bernie Reilly > CRL