Informa agrees to buy Lawrence Erlbaum

Business Publisher, Oct 17, 2006

Informa Group's (London) academic and scientific division, Taylor & Francis (London/Philadelphia, PA), has agreed to acquire science and education publisher Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (LEA; Mahwah, NJ) from founder Lawrence Erlbaum and management. No terms of the deal, subject to regulatory clearances, were given.

LEA publishes more than 100 journal and scholarly titles, references and 200 new books a year under the imprints of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and The Analytic Press. Journal titles cover topics in psychology, education, communication, communication disorders, and the management/organizational field. Titles include "Annals of Behavioral Medicine," "Early Education and Development," "Journal of Research on Adolescence" and "Pedagogies." Informa said that LEA had sales of approximately $21 million in 2005.

Lawrence Erlbaum, who founded the company in 1973, said "it is now time for LEA to benefit from being a part of a larger and more global academic publisher, and I am pleased that Taylor & Francis and I have come to this agreement." Taylor & Francis Group CEO Roger Horton said "strategically, the acquisition of LEA will significantly support our expansion in two important subject areas, psychology and education, particularly in the important US market."

Informa has annual sales in excess of 200 million [pounds sterling] in the academic and scientific publishing sector. Informa division Taylor & Francis Group publishes more than 1000 journals and around 1800 new books each year, with a book backlist of over 20,000 titles. Units include CRC Press (Boca Raton, FL), Garland Publishing (London), Psychology Press (New York) and Routledge (London/New York). The units produce journals and books in 25 major categories, including law, bioscience, computing, food science, earth science, language, physical sciences and medicine.