UPDATE: If you missed today’s Clarivate/ProQuest Acquisition Announcement Conference Call with leadership from both companies, an archived recording is available to stream or download here.
From a Joint Release:
Clarivate, a global leader in providing trusted information and insights to accelerate the pace of innovation, today announced a definitive agreement to acquire ProQuest, a leading global software, data and analytics provider to academic, research and national institutions, from Cambridge Information Group, a family-owned investment firm, and other partners including Atairos, for $5.3 billion, including refinancing of ProQuest debt. The consideration for the acquisition is approximately $4.0 billion in cash and $1.3 billion of equity. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, is expected to close during the third quarter of 2021.
[Clip]
Upon completion of the transaction, two members of the ProQuest Board will join the Clarivate Board, including Andy Snyder, who will have the position of Vice Chairman of the Clarivate Board, and Michael Angelakis, Chairman and CEO of Atairos.
Compelling Strategic Benefits to Drive Future Growth
- Creates a world-leading software and content information provider for academia, governments, public libraries and corporations: Content aggregation, along with software solutions to connect and filter disparate information, is critical in today’s world of information overload. The combination of these two gold-standard organizations will provide a gateway to the world’s largest collection of interoperable, expertly curated content, including journal content, primary sources, dissertations, news, streaming video and more across multiple academic disciplines. Clarivate will continue to expand its market-leading software to enhance its discovery, sharing and management capabilities.
- Opens new sales opportunities to drive growth in existing and complementary markets: Enterprise software is the fastest growing library market segment and has high customer loyalty due to workflows integrated in core library operations. This acquisition will provide Clarivate with access to complementary markets and varied users, including public libraries, research libraries, school districts and community colleges, with the opportunity to deliver new campus-wide platforms to provide a unified source of knowledge discovery.
- Broadens our analytical offerings: The addition of ProQuest moves the academic analytical capabilities of Clarivate beyond its traditional realm of journal publication data and citations into a much wider range of information sources. There will be long-term predictive and prescriptive analytics opportunities from the enhanced combination of ProQuest’s data cloud with the billions of harmonized data points in the Clarivate Research Intelligence Cloud.
Read the Complete Announcement (Including Financial Information)
What Has Been Announced
Clarivate has signed a definitive agreement to acquire ProQuest, a leading global content aggregation and software business that primarily serves academic markets. As a result of the acquisition:
- The combination of ProQuest content and products with the Web of Science platform creates a leader in research and innovation information and workflow on college campuses, across research institutions and corporations
- Our respective customers will have access to greater innovation across the research lifecycle and make their customers and patrons experiences more integrated and seamless
How will This Effect My Product and Services
Prior to closing there will be no changes, ProQuest and Clarivate remain entirely separate and independent, and we will operate as normal.
Can You Tell Me More About ProQuest
ProQuest’s products empower researchers, support teaching and learning success, improve university workflows and support the needs of librarians in fulfilling their institutional missions. ProQuest provides leading management and workflow solutions such as Alma and Rialto that enable libraries to be more effective and efficient; Library Services, such as Syndetics Unbound and our proprietary Title Matching Fast service, that extend and enhance the value of library assets; authoritative Content, like ProQuest One Academic, Ebook Central and ProQuest Dissertations & Thesis, that drives teaching, learning and research success; and finally Research, Teaching and Learning Tools, such as Leganto, that improve insights and user workflows, producing better results, faster.
How Does This Benefit Me, The Customer
In turbulent times our organizations provide reliability and trust. Trust carries a premium – selectivity, curation of content and data is at the heart of what we do and we will continue to be a reliable and authoritative provider of content, data and deep domain expertise.
Future-focused organizations will be able to respond to their users’ needs more effectively with the delivery of these multiple resources, fulfilling the demand for more cross-disciplinary research and thereby improving research, teaching and learning outcomes at their institutions. This is demonstrated by our Research Intelligence Cloud, which will be enhanced by the addition of full text journal articles, dissertations, news, video and e-books across multiple fields – including science, technology, medicine, law and IP, the arts, literature and humanities and social sciences.
Content aggregation, along with solutions to connect and filter disparate information is critical in a world of information overload. The joining of these two gold-standard organizations will provide a gateway to the world’s largest collection of interoperable, expertly curated content for science and intellectual property, along with technologies that enhance its discovery, sharing and management. This will give our customers a unique ability to reveal connections across the innovation lifecycle.
About Gary Price
